Reflections on the revolution in France, and on the proceedings of certain societies in London, relative to that event

*f ^/**

presented to

CLlux iCiliraru

> —

xA the

llniiuTsity nf (Lin* onto

lu.

Mrs. T. E. Knowlton

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2011 with funding from

University of Toronto

http://www.archive.org/details/reflectionsonreOOburk

fS REFLECTIONS

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE,

AND ON Tilt

PROCEEDINGS OF CERTAIN SOCIETIES
IN LONDON,

RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT

RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE.

I » I _

LONDON:
HENRY WASHBOURNE, SALISBURY SQUARE,

FLEET STREET;
FRASER & CO., EDINBURGH.

MDCCCXXXVI.

f A MHK1DGE:

INTED BY METCALFE AM) 1'AIMER, ST. MARY's STREEl

PREFACE.

It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader, that
the following Reflections had their origin in a cor-
respondence between the Author and a very young
gentleman at Paris, who did him the honour of
desiring his opinion upon the important transactions,
which then, and ever since, have so much occupied
the attention of all men. An answer was written
some time in the month of October 1789; but it
was kept back upon prudential considerations. That
letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following
sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person
to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the
delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter to
the same gentleman. This produced on his part
a new and pressing application for the Author's
sentiments.

The Author began a second and more full dis-
cussion on the subject. This lie had some thoughts
of publishing early in the last spring; but the
matter gaining upon him, he found that what he
had undertaken not only far exceeded the measure
of a letter, but that its importance required rather
a more detailed consideration than at that time
he had any leisure to bestow upon it. However,
having thrown down his first thoughts in the form
of a letter, and indeed, when he sat down to write,
having intended it for a private letter, be found it
difficult to change the form of address, when his
sentiments had grown into a greater extent, and had
received another direction. A different plan, lie is
sensible, might be more favourable to a commodious
division and distribution of his matter.

REFLECTIONS,

ire.

DEAR SIR,

You are pleased to call again, and with some
earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings
in France. I will not give you reason to imagine
that I think my sentiments of such value as to wish
myself to be solicited about them. They are of too
little consequence to be very anxiously either com-
municated or withheld. It was from attention to
you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the time
when you first desired to receive them. In the first
letter I had the honour to write to you, and which
at length I send, I wrote neither for, nor from any
description of men ; nor shall I in this. My errors,
if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to
answer for them.

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted
to you, that though I do most heartily wish that
France may be animated by a spirit of rational
liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest
policy, to provide a permanent body, in which that

2 Rl 1 I 1 i' I Ion- ON TH1

spirit may reside, and an effectual organ, by which it
may act, it is my misfortune t<> entertain great

doubts concerning Beveral material points in your
late transactions.
You imagined, when you wrote last, that 1 might
ly be reckoned among the approvers of certain

proceedings in France, from the solemn public seal
of sanction they have received from two clubs
of gentlemen in London, called the Constitutional
Society, and the Revolution Society.

I certainly have the honour to belong to more
clubs than one, in which the constitution of this
kingdom, and the principles of the glorious Revo-
lution, are held in high reverence: and I reckon
myself among the most forward in my zeal for
maintaining that constitution and those principles in
their utmost purity and vigour. It is because I do
so. that I think it necessary for me that there
should be no mi-take. Those who cultivate the
memory of our Revolution, and those who are
attached to the constitution of this kingdom, will
take good care how they are involved with persona
wlio. under the pretext of zeal towards the Revo-
lution and constitution, too frequently wander
from their true principles; and are ready on every
occasion to depart from the firm but cautious and
deliberate spirit which produced the one, and which
presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer
the more material particulars in your letter. I shall
beg leave to give you such information as I have
been able to obtain of the two clubs which have
thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the con-
terns of France; first assuring you, that I am not,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. .'$

and that I have never been, a member of either of
those societies.

The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society,
or Society for Constitutional Information, or by
some such title, is, I believe, of seven or eight years
standing. The institution of this society appears to
be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable, nature :
it was intended for the circulation, at the expense of
the members, of many books, which few others
would be at the expense of buying ; and which
might lie on the hands of the booksellers, to the
great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the
books so charitably circulated, were ever as chari-
tably read, is more than I know. Possibly several
of them have been exported to France ; and, like
goods not in request here, may with you have found
a market. I have heard much talk of the lights to
be drawn from books that are sent from hence.
What improvements they have had in their passage
(as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing
the sea) I cannot tell : but I never heard a man of
common judgment, or the least degree of infor-
mation, speak a word in praise of the greater part of
the publications circulated by that society ; nor have
their proceedings been accounted, except by some of
themselves, as of any serious consequence.

Your National Assembly seems to entertain much
the same opinion that I do of this poor charitable
club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of
your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution
Society ; when their fellows in the Constitutional
were, in equity, entitled to some share. Since you
have selected the Revolution Society as the great

4 KM 1 1 i I h>N- ON

object of your national thanks and praises \>>u will
think me excusable in making its late conduct the
subject of my observations. The National Assembly
of France has given importance to these gentlemen
by adopting them ; and they return the favour, by
acting as a sort of sub-committee in England for
extending the principles of the National Assembly.
Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of
privileged persons; as no inconsiderable members in
the diplomatic body. This is one among the revo-
lutions which have given splendour to obscurity, and
distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately
I do not recollect to have heard of this cluh. I am
quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my
thoughts; nor, 1 believe, those of any person out of
their own set. I rind, upon enquiry; that on the
anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of
dissenters, but of what denomination 1 know not,
have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in
one of their churches ; and that afterwards they
spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do. at the
tavern. But I never heard that any public measure,
or political system, much less that the merits of the
constitution ol any foreign nation, had been the
subject of a formal proceeding at their festivals ;
until, to my inexpressible surprise, I found them in
a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address,
giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings
of the National Assembly in France.

In the ancient principles and conduct of the cluh,
so far at least as they were declared, 1 see nothing
to which I, or any Bober man, could possibly tike
exception. I think it very probable, that foi some

INVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 5

purpose, new members may have entered among
them ; and that some truly christian politicians, who
love to dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal
the hand which distributes the dole, may have made
them the instruments of their pious designs. What-
ever I may have reason to suspect concerning private
management, I shall speak of nothing as of a cer-
tainty but what is public.

For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly
or indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I
certainly take my full share, along with the rest of
the world, in my individual and private capacity, in
speculating on what has been done, or is doing, on
the public stage ; in any place ancient or modern ; in
the republic of Rome, or the republic of Paris : but
having no general apostolical mission, being a citizen
of a particular state, and being bound up in a con-
siderable degree by its public will, I should think it
at least improper and irregular for me to open
a formal public correspondence with the actual
government of a foreign nation, without the express
authority of the government under which I live.

I should be still more unwilling to enter into that
correspondence, under any thing like an equivocal
description, which to many unacquainted with our
usages might make the address, in which I joined,
appear as the act of persons in some sort of corporate
capacity, acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom,
and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it.
On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of
unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit
which may be practised under them, and not from
mere formality, the house of commons would reject

b3

r> i;i pli c noNs on Tiir.

the most sneaking petition for the most trifling
object, under that mode of signature to which yon
li.w e thrown open the folding-doors of your presence-
chamber, and have ushered into your National
Assembly, with as much ceremony and parade, and
with as great a hustle of applause, as if you had been
visited by the whole representative majesty of the
whole English nation. If what this society has
thought proper to send forth had been a niece of
argument, it would have signified little whose argu-
ment it was. It would he neither the more nor the
less convincing on account of the party it rune from.
But tins is only a vote and resolution. It stands
solely on authority ; and in this case it is the mere
authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their
signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been
annexed to their instrument. The world would
then have the means of knowing how many they
are, who they are, and of what value their opinions
may be, from their personal abilities, from their
knowledge, their experience, or their lead and autho-

^rity in this state. To me, who am but a plain man,
the proceeding looks a little too refined and too
ingenious ; it has too much the air of a political
stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a
high-sounding name, an importance to the public

^declarations of this club, which, when the matter
came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether
so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much
the complexion of a fraud.

I flatter myself that 1 love a manly, moral,
regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that
society, be he who he will, and perhaps I have

REVOLUTION IN TRANCE. /

given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause,
in the whole course of my public conduct. I think
I envy liberty as little as they do, to any other
nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise
or blame to any thing which relates to human
actions and human concerns, on a simple view of
the object, as it stands stripped of every relation,
in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical
abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gen-
tlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every
political principle its distinguishing colour and dis-
criminating effect. The circumstances are what
render every civil and political scheme beneficial
or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking,
government, as well as liberty, is good ; yet could
I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated
France on her enjoyment of a government (for she
then had a government) without enquiry what the
nature of that government was, or how it was
administered? Can I now congratulate the same
nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the
abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of
mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman,
who has escaped from the protecting restraint and
wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to
the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to con-
gratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has
broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural
rights? This would be to act over again the scene
of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their
heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the
Sorrowful Countenance.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see

M riONS ON THE

a Btrong principle al work ; and tliis. for a while, is
all 1 can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the
fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ou^bt to
suspend our judgment until the first effervescence
is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and
until we see something deeper than the agitation of

a troubled and frothy surface. 1 must be tolerably

sure, before 1 venture publicly to congratulate men
upon a blessing, that they have really received one.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;
and adulation is not of more service to the people
than to kings. I should therefore suspend my
congratulations on the new liberty of France, until
I was informed how it had been combined with
government : with public force ; with the discipline
and obedience of armies; with the collection of an
effective and well-distributed revenue ; with morality
and religion; with the solidity of property; with
pence and order : with civil and social manners.

All these Qn their way are good things too; and,
without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts,
and is not likely to continue lon<r. The effect of
liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they
please : we ought to see what it will please them
to do, before we ri^k congratulations, which may
be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would
dictate this in the case of separate insulated private

men : but liberty, when men act in bodies, IS pOWOr.

Considerate people, before they declare themselves,
will observe the use which is made o{ powers and

particularly of so trying a thing as >/<"■ power in
new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dis-
positions they have little or no experience, and in

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 9

situations where those who appear the most stirring
in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.

All these considerations however were below the
transcendental dignity of the Revolution Society.
Whilst I continued in the country, from whence
I had the honour of writing to you, I had but an
imperfect idea of their transactions. On my coming
to town, I sent for an account of their proceedings,
which had been published by their authority, con-
taining a sermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de
Rochefaucault's and the Archbishop of Aix's letter,
and several other documents annexed. The whole
of that publication, with the manifest design of
connecting the affairs of France with those of
England, by drawing us into an imitation of the
conduct of the National Assembly, gave me a con-
siderable degree of uneasiness. The effect of that
conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and
tranquillity of France, became every day more
evident. The form of constitution to be settled, for
its future polity, became more clear. We are now
in a condition to discern, with tolerable exactness,
the true nature of the object held up to our imitation.
If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates
silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of
a higher order may justify us in speaking our
thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in
England are at present feeble enough ; but with you
we have seen an infancy still more feeble, growing
by moments into a strength to heap mountains upon
mountains, and to wage war with heaven itself.
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot
be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

10 REFLECTIONS OH I 111.

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions,
than mined by too confident a security.

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country,
but by no means unconcerned fur yours, I wish to
communicate more largely, what was at first intended
only for your prival i satisfaction. 1 shall still keep
your affairs in my eye. and continue to address
myself to you. Indulging myself in the freedom of
epistolary intercourse, 1 beg leave to throw out my
thoughts, and express my feelings, just as they arise
in my mind, with very little attention to formal
method. I set out with the proceedings of the
Revolution Society; hut I shall not confine myself
to them. Ls it possible I should? It looks t<> me as
if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of Prance
alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than
Europe. All circumstance-- taken together, the
French revolution is the most astonishing that has
hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful
things are brought about in many Instances by
means the most absurd and ridiculous; in the most
ridiculous modes ; and apparently by the most
contemptible instruments. Every thing seems out
of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity,
and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all
sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi*
comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily
succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the
mind ; alternate contempt and indignation ; alternate
laughter and tears ; alternate scorn and horror.

It cannot however be denied, that to some this
strange scene appeared in quite another point of
view. Into them it inspired no other sentiments

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 1 1

than those of exultation and rapture. They saw
nothing in what lias been done in France, but a firm
and temperate exertion of freedom ; so consistent,
on the whole, with morals and with piety, as to make
it deserving not only of the secular applause of
dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it
a fit theme for all the devout effusions of sacred
eloquence.

On the forenoon of the 4th of November last,
Doctor Richard Price, a non-conforming minister of
eminence, preached at the dissenting meeting-house
of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very
extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there
are some good moral and religious sentiments, and
not ill expressed, mixed up in a sort of porridge of
various political opinions and reflections : but the
revolution in F ranee is the grand ingredient in the
cauldron. I consider the address transmitted by
the Revolution Society to the National Assembly,
through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the prin-
ciples of the sermon, and as a corollary from them.
It was moved by the preacher of that discourse.
It was passed by those who came reeking from
the effect of the sermon, without any censure or
qualification, expressed or implied. If, however,
any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to
separate the sermon from the resolution, they know
how to acknowledge the one, and to disavow the
other. They may do it : I cannot.

For my part, I looked on that sermon as the
public declaration of a man much connected with
literary caballers, and intriguing philosophers ; with
political theologians, and theological politicians, both

I '_' S'S ON 1 HE

at home and abroad. I know they set him up as
a sort of oracle; because, with the best intentions in
tlie world, he naturally pkilippize8, and chants his
prophetic song in exact unison with their designs.

That sermon is in a strain which 1 believe has
not been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits
which are tolerated or encouraged in it. since the
year 1648, when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the
Reverend Hugh Peters, made tie' \ault of the king's
own chapel at St. .James's ring with the honour and
privilege of the saints, who. with the "high pi
of God in their mouths, and a //ro-edged sword in
their hands, were to execute judgment on the
heathen, and punishments upon the people ; to bind
their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters
of iron."* Few harangues from the pulpit, except
in the days of your league in France, or in the days
of our solemn league and covenant in England, have
ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than
this lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however,
that something like moderation were visible in this
political sermon ; yet politics and the pulpit are
terms that have little agreement. No sound ought
to be heard in the church but the healing voire of
christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and
civil government gains as little as that of religion by
this confusion of duties. Those who quit their

proper character, to assume what does not belong to

them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of tin-
character they leave, and of the character they
assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in
which (ley ar > so fond of meddling, and inex-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 13

perienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce
with so much confidence, they have nothing of
politics but the passions they excite. Surely the
church is a place where one day's truce ought to
be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of
mankind.

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discon-
tinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a
novelty not wholly without danger. I do not
charge this danger equally to every part of the dis-
course. The hint given to a noble and reverend
lay-divine, who is supposed high in office in one of
our universities,* and to other lay-divines " of rank
and literature," may be proper and seasonable,
though somewhat new. If the noble Seeke?s should
find nothing to satisfy their pious fancies in the old
staple of the national church, or in all the rich
variety to be found in the well-assorted warehouses
of the dissenting congregations, Dr. Price advises
them to improve upon non-conformity ; and to set
up, each of them, a separate meeting-house upon
his own particular principles. f It is somewhat
remarkable that this reverend divine should be so
earnest for setting up new churches, and so perfectly
indifferent concerning the doctrine which may be
taught in them. His zeal is of a curious character.
It is not for the propagation of his own opinions, but

* " Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4, 1789, by Dr.
Richard Price," 3d edition, pp. 17, IS.

+ " Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by
public authority ought, if they can find no worship ovt of the church'
which they approve, to set up a separate worship for themselves ;
and by doing this, and giving an example of a rational and manly
worship, men of weight from their rank and literature may do the
greatest service to society and the world." — Dr. Price's Sermon, p. 18.

14 i;l l I. l.i 1 [ONS dn mi

of any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of truth,
but for the spreading of contradiction. Let the
noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from
whom or from what. This great point once secured,
it is taken for granted their religion will be rational
and manly. I doubt whether religion would reap
all the benefits which the calculating divine computes
from this '••xreat company of great preachers." It
would certainly be a valuable addition of uon-
descripts to the ample collection of known classes,
genera, and species, which at prevent beautify the
/tortus siccus of dissent. A sermon from a noble
duke, or a noble marquis, or a noble earl, or baron
bold, would certainly increase and diversify the

amusements of this town, which begins tit grow
satiated with the uniform round of its vapid dissipa-
tions. I should only stipulate that these new Mess-
Johns in robes and coronets should keep some sort
of hounds iii the democratic and levelling principles
which are expected from their titled pulpits. The
new evangelists will. I dare say, disappoint the
hopes that are conceived of them. They will not
become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic
divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congrega-
tions that they may, as in former blessed times,
preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons, and
corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements,
however favourable to the cause of compulsory
freedom, civil and religious, may not be equally
conducive to the national tranquillity. These few
restrictions I hope are no irreat stretches of intole
ranee, no very violent exertions of despotism.
Hut I may say of our preacher, " utinam nugxs

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 15

tota ilia dedisset tempora scpvitiw." — All things in this
his fulminating bull are not of so innoxious a ten-
dency. His doctrines affect our constitution in its
vital parts. He tells the Revolution Society, in this
political sermon, that his majesty " is almost the only
lawful king in the world, because the only one who
owes his crown to the choice of his people?' As to
the kings of the world, all of whom (except one) this
archpontiff of the rights of men, with all the pleni-
tude, and with more than the boldness of the papal
deposing power in its meridian fervour of the twelfth
century, puts into one sweeping clause of ban and
anathema, and proclaims usurpers by circles of
longitude and latitude, over the whole globe, it
behoves them to consider how they admit into their
territories these apostolic missionaries, who are to
tell their subjects they are not lawful kings. That
is their concern. It is ours, as a domestic interest
of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity
of the only principle upon which these gentlemen
acknowledge a king of Great Britain to be entitled
to their allegiance.

This doctrine, as applied to the prjnce now on
the British throne, either is nonsense, and therefore
neither true nor false, or it affirms a most unfounded,
dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position.
According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his
majesty does not owe his crown to the choice of his
people, he is no lawful king. Now nothing can be
more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is
so held by his majesty. Therefore if you follow
their rule, the king of Great Britain, who most
certainly does not owe his high office to any form of

1G l.l I I.I CI [ONS OK I III

popular election, is in no respect better than the
rest of the gang of usurpers, who reign, or rather
rob, all over the face of this bur miserable world,

without any SOrl of right or title to the allegiance of
their people. The policy of this general doctrine,
so qualified, is evident enough. The propagators of
this political L'ospel are in hopes their abstract
principle (their principle that a popular choice is
necessarj to the legal existence of the sovereign
magistracy) would be overlooked whilst the king of
Great Britain was not affected by it. In the mean
time the ears of their congregations would be
gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first
principle admitted without dispute. For the pr
it would only operate as a theory, pickled in the
preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid by
for future use. ('undo >i cm/tpono i/uce mox depro-
mere possim. By this policy, whilst our government
is soothed with a reservation in its favour, to which
it has no claim, the security, which it has in common
with all governments, so far as opinion is .security, is
taken away.

Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice
is taken of their doctrines: but when th

be examined upon the plain meaning of their words
and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then
equivocations and slippery constructions come into
play. When they s;ly the king owes his crown to
the choice of his people, and is- therefore the only-
lawful sovereign in the world, they will perhaps tell
US they mean to say no more than that some of the
king's predecessors nave been called to the throne
by some sort of choice; and therefore he owe- his

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 17

crown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a
miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their
proposition safe, by rendering it nugatory. They
are welcome to the asylum they seek for their
offence, since they take refuge in their folly. For,
if you admit this interpretation, how does their idea
of election differ from our idea of inheritance ? And
how does the settlement of the crown in the Bruns-
wick line, derived from James the First, come to
legalize our monarchy, rather than that of any of the
neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to
be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen
by those who called them to govern. There is
ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms
of Europe were, at a remote period, elective, with
more or fewer limitations in the objects of choice ;
but whatever kings might have been here or
elsewhere, a thousand years ago, or in whatever
manner the ruling dynasties of England or France
may have begun, the king of Great Britain is- at
this day king by a fixed rule of succession, according
to the laws of his country ; and whilst the legal
conditions of the compact of sovereignty are per-
formed by him (as they are performed) he holds his
crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolutionary
Society, who have not a single vote for a king
amongst them, either individually or collectively ;
though I make no doubt they would soon erect
themselves into an electoral college, if things were
ripe to give effect to their claim. His majesty's
heirs and successors, eacli in his time and order, will
come to the crown with the same contempt of their
choice with which his majesty has succeeded to that
he wears. c 3

18 Kl.l LECTIO N8 U i

Whatever may be the SUCCe ion in ex-

plaining away the gross error oifact, which sup]
that his majesty (though he holds it in concurrence
with the wishes) owes his crown t<> the choice of his
people, yet nothing ran evade their full explicit
declaration, concerning the principle of a right in the
people to choose, which right is directly maintained,
and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinu-
ations concerning election hottom in this proposition,
and are referrible to it. Lest the foundation of the
king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant
of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds
dogmatically to assert,* that by the principles of the
Revolution the people of England have acquired
three fundamental rights, all of which, with him,
compose one system, and lie together in one short
sentence; namely, that we have acquired a right —
1. "To choose our own governors."
"2. " To cashier them for misconduct."
3. " To frame a government tor ourselves."
Tins new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights,
though made in the name of the whole people,belongs
to those gentlemen and their faction only. The
body of the people of England have no share in it.
They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the prac-
tical assertion of it witli their lives and fortunes.
They are bound to do so by the laws of their country,
made at the time of that very Revolution which is
appealed to in favour of the fictitious rights claimed
by the society which abuses its nam ■.

These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their

* Discourse on the Lore of our Country, bj Pr Price,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 19

reasonings on the Revolution of 1688, have a revo-
lution which happened in England about forty years
before, and the late French revolution, so much
before their eyes, and in their hearts, that they are
constantly confounding all the three together. It is
necessary that we should separate what they con-
found. We must recal their erring fancies to the
acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the dis-
covery of its true principles. If the principles of
the Revolution of 1688 are any where to be found,
it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right.
In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration,
drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and
not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not one
word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general
right " to choose our own governors ; to cashier
them for misconduct ; and to form a government
for ourselves."

This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of
William and Mary, sess. ii. ch. 2,) is the corner-stone
of our constitution, as reinforced, explained, im-
proved, and in its fundamental principles for ever
settled. It is called " An act for declaring the
"rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling
" the succession of the crown." You will observe,
that these rights and this succession are declared in
one body, and bound indissolubly together.

A few years after this period, a second opportunity
offered for asserting a right of election to the crown.
On the prospect of a total failure of issue from King
William, and from the princess, afterwards Queen
Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the
crown, and of a further security for the liberties of

90 BEFLKCTIONS ON THE

the people) again came before the legislature. Did
thej this second time make any provision for legaliz-
ing the crown on the spurious revolution principles
of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the prin-
ciples which prevailed in the Declaration of Right j
indicating with more precision the persons who were
to inherit in the Protestant line. This ad bIbo
incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties and
an hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of
a right to choose our own governors, they declared
that the succession in that line (the Protestant line
drawn from James the First was absolutely necessary
"for the peace, quiet, and security of tin- realm,"
and that it was equally Urgent on them "to maintain
"a. certainty in the succession thereof, to which the
" suhjects may safely have recourse for their pro-
"tection." Both these act-;, in which are heard the
unerring, unambiguous oracles of revolution policy,
instead of countenancing the delusive, gipsy pre-
dictions of a " right to choose our governors," prove
to a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom
of the nation was from turning a case of necessity
into a rule of law.

Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in
the person of King William, a small and a temporary
de\ iatioii from the strict order of a regular hereditary
succession ; but it is against all genuine principles
of jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law
made in a special case, and regarding an individual
person. Privilegium not) transit in exttnphm. If

ever there was a time favourable tor establishing the

principle, that a kiii!_r of popular choice was the only
legal kin«r. without all doubt it was at the Revolution.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 21

Its not being done at that time is a proof that the
nation was of opinion it ought not to be done at any
time. There is no person so completely ignorant of
our history, as not to know that the majority in
parliament of both parties were so little disposed to
any thing resembling that principle, that at first they
were determined to place the vacant crown, not on
the head of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his
wife Mary, daughter of King James, the eldest born
of the issue of that king, which they acknowledged
as undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very
trite story, to recal to your memory all those
circumstances which demonstrated that their accept-
ing King William was not properly a choice ; but,
to all those who did not wish, in effect, to recal King
James, or to deluge their country in blood, and
again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into
the peril they had just escaped, it was an act of
necessity, in the strictest moral sense in which
necessity can be taken.

In the very act, in which for a time, and in a single
case, parliament departed from the strict order of
inheritance, in favour of a prince, who, though not
next, was however very near in the line of succes-
sion, it is curious to observe how Lord Somers, who
drew the bill called the Declaration of Right, has
comported himself on that delicate occasion. It is
curious to observe with what address this temporary
solution of continuity is kept from the eye ; whilst
all that could be found in this act of necessity to
countenance the idea of an hereditary succession is
brought forward, and fostered, and made the most
of, by this great man, and by the legislature who

22 REFLECTIONS ON THE

followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of
an act of parliament, lie makes the lords and com-
mons fall to a pious, legislative ejaculation, and
declare, that they consider it "as a marvellous
" providence, and merciful goodness of God to this
" nation, to preserve their said majesties' roy a/persons,
"most happily to reign over us on the thront of their
" ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts,
"they return their humblest thanks and praises." —
The legislature plainly had in view the act of
recognition of the 1st of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 3,
and that of James the First, chap. 1, both acts
strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature of the
crown ; and in many parts they follow, with a nearly
literal precision, the words and even the form of
thanksgiving which is found in these old declaratory
statutes.

The two houses, in the act of King William, did
not thank God that they had found a fair opportunity
to assert a right to choose their own governors,
much less to make an election the only lawful title
to the crown. Their having been in condition to
avoid the very appearance of it, as much as possible,
was by them considered as a providential e
They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every
circumstance tending to weaken the rights, which
in the meliorated order of succession they meant to
perpetuate ; or which might furnish a precedent for
any future departure from what they had then settled
for ever. Accordingly, that they might not relax
the nerves of their monarchy, and that they might
preserve a close conformity to the practice of their
ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory statutes

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 23

of Queen Mary* and Queen Elizabeth, in the next
clause they vest, by recognition, in their majesties,
"all the legal prerogatives of the crown, declaring,
"that in them they are most fully, rightfully, and
"entirely invested, incorporated, united, andannexed."
In the clause which follows, for preventing questions,
by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they
declare (observing also in this the traditionary lan-
guage, along with the traditionary policy of the
nation, and repeating as from a rubric the language
of the preceding acts of Elizabeth and James) that on
the preserving "a certainty in the succession thereof,
"the unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation doth,
" under God, wholly depend."

They knew that a doubtful title of succession would
but too much resemble an election ; and that an elec-
tion would be utterly destructive of the " unity,
peace, and tranquillity of this nation," which they
thought to be considerations of some moment. To
provide for these objects, and therefore to exclude
for ever the Old Jewry doctrine of " a right to choose
our own governors," they follow with a clause, con-
taining a most solemn pledge, taken from the
preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a
pledge as ever was or can be given in favour of an
hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation
as could be made of the principles by this society
imputed to them : " The lords spiritual and tempo-
ral, and commons, do, in the name of all the people
"aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit them-
" selves, their heirs, arid posterities for ever ; and do

* 1st Mary, sess. iii. ch. 1.

•J4 . . i 1 1 riONS un mr

•• faithfully promise, that tin y will stand to, maintain,
" and defend their said majesties, and also the Kmi-
"tation of tin crown, herein specified and contained.

''to the Utmost nl' their powers," &C. &C.

So far is it from being true, that we acquired a
right by the Revolution to elect our kings, that if

we had possessed it before, the English nation did at
that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it,
for themselves and for all their posterity for ever.
e gentlemen may value themselves as much as
please on their whig principles; but I never
■ to be thought a better whig than Lord
Somers ; or to understand the principles of the
Revolution better than those by whom it was
brought about; or to read in the Declaration <.l
Right any mysteries unknown to those whose pene-
trating style has engraved in our ordinances, and
in our hearts, the words and spirit of that immortal
law.

It is true that, aided with the powers derived from
and opportunity, the nation was at that time,
in some sense, free to take what course it pleased for
tilling the throne ; hut only free to do so upon the
grounds on which they might have wholly
abolished their monarchy, and every Other part of
their constitution. However, they did not think
such bold changes within their commission. It is
indeed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits
to the mere abstract competence of the supreme
power, such as was exercised by parliament at thai
time ; but the limits of a moral competence, subject-
ing, even in powers more indisputably sovereign,
occasional will to permanent reason, and to the

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 2.J

steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed funda-
mental policy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly
binding upon those who exercise any authority,
under any name, or under any title, in the state.
The house of lords, for instance, is not morally
competent to dissolve the house of commons ; no,
nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it
would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he
cannot abdicate for the monarchy. By as strong,
or by a stronger reason, the house of commons
cannot renounce its share of authority. The en-
gagement and pact of society, which generally goes
by the name of the constitution, forbids such inva-
sion and such surrender. The constituent parts of
a state are obliged to hold their public faith with
each other, and with all those who derive any serious
interest under their engagements, as much as the
whole state is bound to keep its faith with separate
communities. Otherwise competence and power
would soon be confounded, and no law be left but
the will of a prevailing force. On this principle the
succession of the crown has always been what it now
is, an hereditary succession by law : in the old line
it was a succession by the common law ; in the new
by the statute law, operating on the principles of the
common law, not changing the substance, but regu-
lating the mode, and describing the persons. Both
these descriptions of law are of the same force, and are
derived from an equal authority, emanating from the
common agreement and original compact of the state,
communi sponsione rcipubliccc, and as such are equally
binding on kin<j and people too, as long as the

26 REFLECTIONS ON Till.

terms are observed, and they continue the same body
politic.

It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not
suffer ourselves to be entangled in the mazes of
metaphysic sophistry, the use both of a fixed rule
and an occasional deviation ; the sacredness of an
hereditary principle of succession in our government,
with a power of change in its application in cases of
extreme emergency. Even in that extremity it' we
take the measure of our rights by our exercise of
them at the Revolution) the change is to be confined
to the peccant part only ; to the part which produced
the necessary deviation ; and even then it is to be
effected without a decomposition of the whole civil
ami political mass, for the purpose of originating
a new civil order out of the first elements of society.

A state without the means of some change is
without the means of its conservation. Without such
means it might even risk the loss of that part of
the constitution which it wished the most religiously
to preserve. The two principles of conservation
and correction operated strongly at the two critical
periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when
England found itself without a king. At both
those periods the nation had lost the bond of union
in their ancient edifice; they. did not. however, dis-
solve the whole fabric. On the contrary, in both
cases they regenerated the deficient part of the old
constitution through the parts which were not im-
paired. They kept these old parts exactly as they
were, that the part recovered might be suited to
them. They acted by the ancient organized states
in the shape of their old organization, and not by
the organic molecuke of s disbanded people. At no

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. '27

time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest
a more tender regard to that fundamental principle
of British constitutional policy, than at the time of
the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line
of hereditary succession. The crown was carried
somewhat out of the line in which it had before
moved; but the new line was derived from the same
stock. It was still a line of hereditary descent ; still
an hereditary descent in the same blood, though an
hereditary descent qualified with protestantism.
When the legislature altered the direction, but kept
the principle, they shewed that they held it in-
violable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had ad-
mitted some amendment in the old time, and long
before the era of the Revolution. Some time after
the conquest great questions arose upon the legal
principles of hereditary descent. It became a matter
of doubt, whether the heir per capita or the heir per
stirpes was to succeed ; but whether the heir per
capita gave way when the heirdom per stirpes took
place, or the catholic heir when the protestant was
preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a
sort of immortality through all transmigrations —
mtdtosque per annos stat for tuna domus et avi nume-
rantur avorum. This is the spirit of our constitution,
not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether
he obtained the crown by law or by force, the here-
ditary succession was either continued or adopted.

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see
nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the
constitution ; and they take the deviation from the

EEI LECTIONS OK

principle for the principle. They have little r
to the obvious consequences of their doctrine,
though they must see that it leaves positive authority
in very few of the positive institutions of this
country. When such an unwarrantable maxim is
once established, that no throne is lawful but the
elective, no one act of the princes who preceded
this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do
these theorists mean to imitate some of their pre-
decessors, who ('.ragged the bodies of our ancient
sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they
mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings
that have reigned before the Revolution, and conse-
quently to stain the throne of England with the blot
of a continual usurpation? Do they mean to invali-
date, annul, or to call into question, together with
the titles of the whole line of our kings. •
body of our statute law which passed under those
whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws of inesti-
mable value to our liberties — of as great value at
least as any which have passed at or since the period
of the Revolution? If kings, who did not owe their
crown to the choice of their people, had no title to
make laws, what will become of the statute
non concedendof — of the petition of right 1 — of the
act of habeas corpus? Do these new doctors of the
rights of men presume to assert, that King James
the Second, who came to the crown as next ofblood,
according to the rules of a then unqualified SU
sion, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful
king of England, before he had done any of those
acts which were justly construed into an abdication
of his crown J If he was not, much trouble in par-

REVOLUTION IN' FRANCE. 29

liament might have been saved at the period these
gentlemen commemorate. But King James was a
bad king with a good title, and not an usurper.
The princes who succeeded according to the act of
parliament which settled the crown on the electress
Sophia and on her descendants, being Protestants,
came in as much by a title of inheritance as King
James did. He came in according to the law, as it
stood at his accession to the crown ; and the princes
of the House of Brunswick came to the inheritance
of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it
stood at their several accessions of protestant de-
scent and inheritance, as I hope I have shewn suffi-
ciently.

The law by which this royal family is specifically
destined to the succession, is the act of the 12th and
13th of King William. The terms of this act bind
" us and our heirs, and our posterity, to them, their
"heirs, and their posterity," being Protestants, to
the end of time, in the same words as the Declaration
of Right had bound us to the heirs of King William
and Queen Mary. It therefore secures both an
hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On
what ground, except the constitutional policy of
forming an establishment to secure that kind of
succession which is to preclude a choice of the
people for ever, could the legislature have fasti-
diously rejected the fair and abundant choice which
our own country presented to them, and searched in
strange lands for a foreign princess, from whose
womb the line of our future rulers were to derive
their title to govern millions of men through a series
of ages ?

d3

:50 lit i 11 .in)

The Princess Sophia was named in the ai
settlement of the 12th and 13th of King William,
for a stock and root of inheritance to our kings, and
not for her merits as a temporary administratrix of
a power, which she might not, and in fact did not,
herself ever exercise. She was adopted for one
reason, and for pne only, because, says the o< t,
" the most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and
" Duchess Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of the
"most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late Queen ut'
" Bohemia, daughter of our late sovereign lord King
" James the First, of happy memory, and is hereby
" declared to be the next in succession in the
" Protestant line," &c. &c. ; "and the crown shall
"continue to the heirs of her body, being Pro-
" testants." This limitation was made by parliament,
that through the Princess Sophia an inheritable line,
not only was to be continued in future, but (what
they thought very material) that through her it was
to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in
King James the First; in order that the monarchy
might preserve an unbroken unity through all ages,
and might be preserved (with safety to our religion)
in the old approved mode by descent, in which, if
our liberties had been once endangered, they had
often, through all storms and struggles of prerogative
and privilege, been preserved. They did well. No
experience has taught us, that in any other course
or method than that of an hereditary croun, our
liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved
sacred as onr hereditary right. An irregular, con-
vulsive movement may be necessary to throw off ail
irregular, convulsive disci,,'. Bui the course of

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. ;5 !

succession is the healthy habit of the British
constitution. Was it that the legislature wanted,
at the act for the limitation of the crown in the
Hanoverian line, drawn through the female descen-
dants of James the First, a due sense of the
inconveniencies of having two or three, or possibly
more, foreigners in succession to the British throne ?
No! — they had- a due sense of the evils which
might happen from such foreign rule, and more than
a due sense of them. But a more decisive proof
cannot be given of the full conviction of the British
nation, that the principles of the Revolution did not
authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure, and
without any attention to the ancient fundamental
principles of our government, than their continuing
to adopt a plan of hereditary protestant succession
in the old line, with all the dangers and all the
inconveniencies of its being a foreign line full before
their eyes, and operating with the utmost force upon
their minds.

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload
a matter, so capable of supporting itself, by the then
unnecessary support of any argument ; but this
seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly
taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to
revolutions, the signals for which have so often been
given from pulpits ; the spirit of change that is gone
abroad ; the total contempt which prevails with you,
and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient
institutions, when set in opposition to a present
sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present
inclination : all these considerations make it not
unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our atten-

32 REFLECTIONS ON THE

tion to the true principles of our own domestic laws;
that you, my French friend, should begin to know,
and that we should continue to cherish them. We
ought not, on either side of the water, to sutler
ourselves to he imposed upon by the counterfeit
wares which some persons, hy a douhle fraud, export
to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities of
British growth though wholly alien to our soil, in
order afterwards tO smuggle them back again into
this country, manufactured alter the newest Paris
fashion of an improved liberty.

The people of England will not ape the fashions
they have never tried ; nor go back to those which
they have found mischievous on trial. They look
upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown
as among their rights, not as among their wrongs;
as a benefit, not as a grievance; as a security for
their liberty, not as a badge of servitude. They
look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it
stands, to be of inestimable value ; and they conceive
the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a
pledge of the stability and perpetuity of all the other
members of our constitution.

1 shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take
notice of some paltry artifices, which the abettors of
election as the only lawful title to the crown, are
ready to employ, in order to render the support of
the just principles of our constitution a task some-
what invidious. These sophisters substitute a fictitious
cause, and feigned personages, in whose favour they
suppose you engaged, whenever you defend the
inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with
them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 33

some of those exploded fanatics of slavery, who
formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now
maintains, " that the crown is held by divine,
hereditary, and indefeasible right." — These old
fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized as if
hereditary royalty was the only lawful government
in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular
arbitrary power, maintain that a popular election
is the sole lawful source of authority. The old
prerogative enthusiasts, it is true, did speculate
foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy
had more of a divine sanction than any other mode
of government ; and as if a right to govern by
inheritance were in strictness indefeasible in every
person who should be found in the succession to
a throne, and under every circumstance, which no
civil or political right can be. But an absurd
opinion concerning the king's hereditary right, to the
crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and
bottomed upon solid principles of law and policy.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines
were to vitiate the objects in which they are con-
versant, we should have no law and no religion left
in the world. But an absurd theory on one side of a
question forms no justification for alleging a false
fact, orpromulgating mischievous maximson theother.
The second claim of the Revolution Society is
" a right of cashiering their governors for mis-
conduct." Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors
entertained of forming such a precedent as that " of
cashiering for misconduct," was the cause that the
declaration of the act which implied the abdication
of King James, was, if it had any fault, rather too

34 REFLECTIONS ON THE

guarded, and too circumstantial.* But all this guard,
and all this accumulation of circumstances, serves to
shew the spirit of caution which predominated in the
national councils, in a situation in which men, irritated
by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are
apt to ahandon themselves to violent and extreme
courses : it shews the anxiety of the great men who
influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event,
to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and
not a nursery of future revolutions.

No government could stand a moment, if it could
he Mown down with any thing so loose and indefinite
as an opinion of " misconduct." They who led at the
Revolution, grounded the virtual abdication of King
James upon no such light and uncertain principle.
They charged him with nothing less than a design,
continued by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to
subvert the Protestant church and state, and their
fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they
charged him with having broken the original contract
between king and people. This was more than
misconduct. A grave and overruling necessity
obliged them to take the step they took, and took
with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous
of all laws. Their trust for the future preservation
of the constitution was not in future revolutions.
The grand policy of all their regulations was to
render it almost impracticable for any future sovereign

• "That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert
" the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract
" between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other
" wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having
" withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the govern-
" ment, and the throne is thereby vacant."

REVOLUTION IN FKANCE. 35

to compel the states of the kingdom to have again
recourse to those violent remedies. They left the
crown what, in the eye and estimation of law, it had
ever been, perfectly irresponsible. In order to
lighten the crown still further, they aggravated
responsibility on ministers of state. By the statute
of the 1st of King William, sess. 2nd, called " the act
"for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject,
" and for settling the succession of the crown," they
enacted, that the ministers should serve the crown
on the terms of that declaration. They secured
soon after the frequent meetings of parliament, by
which the whole government would be under the
constant inspection and active control of the popular
representative and of the magnates of the kingdom.
In the next great constitutional act, that of the 12th
and 13th of King William, for the further limitation
of the crown, and better securing the rights and
liberties of the subject, they provided, "that no
"pardon under the great seal of England should be
"pleadable to an impeachment by the commons in
"parliament." The rule laid down for government
in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspection
of parliament, the practical claim of impeachment,
they thought infinitely a better security, not only for
their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of
administration, than the reservation of a right so
difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue,
and often so mischievous in the consequences, as
that of " cashiering their governors."

Dr. Price, in this sermon,* condemns very pro-

♦ Pp. 22 — 21.

36 Ml LECTIONS ON THE

perly the practice of gross adulatory addresses to
kiiiLcs. Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes
that his majesty should he told, on occasions of con-
gratulation, that "he is to consider himself as more
properly the servant than the sovereign of his-
people." For a compliment, this new form of
address does not, seem to be very soothing. Those
who are servants, in name as well as in effect, do
not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and
their obligations. The slave, in the old play, tells
his master, " Hrcc commemoratio est quasi expro-
bratio." It is not pleasant as compliment ; it is not
wholesome as instruction. After all, if the king
were to bring himself to echo this new kind of
address, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the
appellation of " Servant of the People " as his royal
style, how either he or we should be much mended
by it, I cannot imagine. 1 have seen very assuming
letters, signed, Your most obedient, humble servant.
The proudest domination that ever was endured on
earth took a title of still greater humility than that
which is now proposed for sovereigns by the apostle
of liberty. Kings and nations were trampled upon
by the foot of one calling himself " the Servant of
servants ; " and mandates for deposing sovereigns
were sealed with the signet of " the Fisherman."

I should have considered all this as no more than
a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an
unsavoury fume, several persons suffer the spirit of
liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support
of the idea, and a part of the scheme of "cashiering
kings for misconduct." In that light it is worth
some observation.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. -M

Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants
of the people, because their power has no other
rational end than that of the general advantage ; but
it is not true that they are in the ordinary sense
(by our constitution at least) any thing like servants ;
the essence of whose situation is to obey the commands
of some other, and to be removeable at pleasure.
But the king of Great Britain obeys no other
person ; all other persons are individually, and col-
lectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal
obedience. The law, which knows neither to flatter
nor to insult, calls this high magistrate, not our
servant, as this humble divine calls him, but " our
sovereign Lord the King;" and we, on our parts,
have learned to speak only the primitive language of
the law, and not the confused jargon of their Baby-
lonian pulpits.

As he is not to obey us, but as we are to obey
the law in him, our constitution has made no sort of
provision towards rendering him, as a servant, in any
degree responsible. Our constitution knows nothing
of a magistrate like the Justicia of Arragon; nor of
any court legally appointed, nor of any process
legally settled for submitting the king to the respon-
sibility belonging to all servants. In this he is not
distinguished from the commons and the lords, who,
in their several public capacities, can never be called
to an account for their conduct ; although the Revo-
lution Society chooses to assert, in direct opposition
to one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our
constitution, that "a king is no more than the first
servant of the public, created by it, and responsible
to it"

38 HI. I LECTIONS ON THE

111 would our ancestors at the Revolution have
deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found
no security for their freedom, but in rendering their
government feeble in its operations, and precarious
in its tenure; if they had been able to contrive no
better remedy against arbitrary power than civil con-
fusion. Let these gentlemen state who that repre-
sentative public is to whom they will affirm the king,
as a servant, to be responsible. It will be then time
enough for me to produce to them the positive
statute law which affirms that he is not.

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these
gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if
ever, be performed without force. It then becomes
a case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are
commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms ;
and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they
are no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of
1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only case in
which any war, and much more a civil war, can
be just. " Justa bella quibus necessaria." The
question of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen like
the phrase better, "cashiering kings." will always be,
as it has always been, an extraordinary question of
state, and wholly out of the law ; a question (like
all other questions of state) of dispositions, and of
means, and of probable consequences, rather than of
positive rights. As it was not made for common
abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience
ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint,
obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single
act, or a single event, which determines it. Govern-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. .39

ments must be abused and deranged indeed, before
it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future
must be as bad as the experience of the past. When
things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of
the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom
nature has qualified to administer in extremities this
critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered
state. Times and occasions, and provocations, will
teach their own lessons. The wise will determine
from the gravity of the case ; the irritable from
sensibility to oppression ; the high-minded from
disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy
hands ; the brave and bold from the love of honourable
danger in a generous cause : but, with or without
right, a revolution will be the very last resource of
the thinking and the good.

The third head of right asserted by the pulpit
of the Old Jewry, namely, the " right to form
a government for ourselves," has, at least, as little
countenance from any thing done at the Revolution,
either in precedent or principle, as the two first of
their claims. The Revolution was made to preserve
our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that
ancient constitution of government which is our
only security for law and liberty. If you are
desirous of knowing the spirit of our constitution,
and the policy which predominated in that great
period which has secured it to this hour, pray look
for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts
of parliament, and journals of parliament, and not in
the sermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner
toasts of the Revolution Society. In the former
you will find other ideas and another language.

40 REFLECTIONS O.N" THE

Such a claim is as ill-suited to our temper and
wishes, as it is unsupported hy any appearance of
authority. The very idea of the fabrication of
a new government, is enough to till us with disgust
and horror. We wished at the period of the Revo-
lution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as
an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that
body and stock of inheritance we have taken care
not to inoculate any scion alien to the nature of
riginal plant. All the reformations we have
hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle
of reference to antiquity ; and I hope, nay I am
persuaded, that all those which possibly may be
made hereafter, will he carefully formed upon
analogical precedent, authority, and example.

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta.
You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great
oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men
who follow him, to Blackstone,* are industrious to
prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour
to prove that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta
of King John, was connected with another positive
charter from Henry I., and that both the one and the
other were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the
still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In
the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors
appear to be in the right : perhaps not always : hut
if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves'
my position still the more strongly; because it
demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards
antiquity, with which the minds of all our lawyers
and legislators, and of all the people whom they

a Charta, printed at D

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 41

wish to influence, have been always filled ; and the
stationary policy of this kingdom »in considering
their most sacred rights and franchises as an in-
heritance.

In the famous law of the 3d of Charles I. called
the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the
king, " Your subjects have inherited this freedom,"
claiming their franchises not on abstract principles
"as the rights of men," but as the rights of English-
men, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.
Selden, and the other profoundly learned men who
drew this petition of right, were as well acquainted,
at least, with all the general theories concerning the
" rights of men," as any of the discoursers in our
pulpits, or on your tribune ; full as well as Dr. Price,
or as the Abbe Sieyes. But, for reasons worthy
of that practical wisdom which superseded their
theoretic science, they preferred this positive, re-
corded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to
the man and the citizen, to that vague speculative
right, which exposed their sure inheritance to be
scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild
litigious spirit.

The same policy pervades all the laws which have
since been made for the preservation of our liberties.
In the 1st of William and Mary, in the famous
statute called the Declaration of Right, the two
houses utter not a syllable of "a right to frame
a government for themselves." You will see that
their whole care was to secure the religion, laws,
and liberties, that had been long possessed, and had
been lately endangered. "Taking* into their most

• 1 W. and M.

I 3

4:2 RKFLl CTIONS ON THE

" serious consideration the best means for making
'*such an establishment, that their religion, laws,
"and liberties, might not be in danger of being
"again subverted," they auspicate all their pro-
ceedings, by stating as some of those best means,
"in the first place" to do "as their ancestors in like
" cases have usually done for vindicating their ancient
"rights and liberties, to declare;" — and then they
pray the king and queen, " that it may be declared
"and enacted, that all and singular the rights and
" liberties asserted anil declared are the true, ancient,
'"and indubitable rights and liberties of the people
" of this kingdom."

You will observe that, from Magna Charta to the
Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy
of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties
as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our
forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity ;
as an estate specially belonging to the people of
this kingdom, without any reference whatever to any
other more general or prior right. By this means
our constitution preserves an unity in so great
a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable
crown ; an inheritable peerage ; and a house of
commons and a people inheriting privileges, fran-
chises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the result of
profound reflection, or rather the happy effect of
following nature, which is wisdom without reflection,
and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally
the result of a selfish temper and confined views.
People will not look forward to posterity, who never
look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the

REVOLUTION IN" FRANCE. 43

people of England well know that the idea of in-
heritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation,
and a sure principle of -transmission, without at all
excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves
acquisition free ; hut it secures what it acquires.
Whatever advantages are obtained by a state pro-
ceeding on these maxims, are locked fast as in a sort
of family settlement; grasped as in a kind of mort-
main for ever. By a constitutional policy, working
after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we
transmit our government and our privileges, in the
same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our
property and our lives. The institutions of policy,
the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, are
handed down, to us and from us, in the same course
and order. Our political system is placed in a just
correspondence and symmetry with the order of the
world, and with the mode of existence decreed to
a permanent body composed of transitory parts j
wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom,
moulding together the great mysterious incorporation
of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never
old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition
of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the
varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation,
and progression. Thus, by preserving the method
of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we
improve we are never wholly new ; in what we
retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering
in this manner and on those principles to our fore-
fathers, we are guided not by the superstition of
antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy.
In this choice of inheritance wc have s;iven to our

44 REFLEl TIONS ON Tin;

frame of polity the image of a relation in blood;
binding up the constitution of our country with our
dearest domestic ties ; adopting our fundamental
laws into the bosom of our family affections ;
keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth
of all their combined and mutually reflected charities,
our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our
altars.

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature
in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the
aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify
the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we
have derived several other, and those no small
benefits, from considering our liberties in the light
of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the
presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of
freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess,
is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of
a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual
native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence
almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those
who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By
this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It
carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has
a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It has its
bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery
of portraits ; its monumental inscriptions ; its re-
cords, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence
to our civil institutions on the principle upon which
nature teaches us to revere individual men ; on
account of their age, and on account of those from
whom they are descended. All your sophisters
cannot produce any thing better adapted to preserve

REVOLUTION' IN FRANCE. 45

a rational and manly freedom than the course that
we have pursued, who have chosen our nature
rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than
our inventions, for the great conservatories and
magazines of our rights and privileges.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our
example, and have given to your recovered freedom
a correspondent -dignity. Your privileges, though
discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your con-
stitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession,
suffered waste and dilapidation ; but you possessed
in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations of
a noble and venerable castle. You might have
repaired those walls ; you might have built on those
old foundations. Your constitution was suspended
before it was perfected ; but you had the elements
of a constitution very nearly as good as could be
wished. In your old states you possessed that
variety of parts corresponding with the various
descriptions of which your commdnity was happily
composed ; you had all that combination, and all
that opposition of interests ; you had that action and
counteraction which, in the natural and in the
political world, from the reciprocal struggle of dis-
cordant powers, draws out the harmony of the
universe. These opposed and conflicting interests,
which you considered as so great a blemish in your
old and in our present constitution, interpose a
salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They
render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of
necessity ; they make all change a subject of com-
promise, which naturally begets moderation ; they
produce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of

46 RJ 1 i.l i FIONS 0*

harsh, crude, unqualified reformations; and rendering
all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the
few or in the many, for ever impracticable. Through

that diversity of members and interests, general
liberty had as many securities as there were separate
views in the several orders ; whilst, by pressing
down the whole by the weighl of a real monarchy,
the separate parts would have been prevented from
warping and starting from their allotted places.

You had all these advantages in your ancient
states ; but you chose to act as if you had never
been moulded into civil society, and had every thing
to begin anew. You began ill, because yon began
by despising every thing that belonged to yott.
Von set up your trade without a capital. If the last
generations of your country appeared without much
lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by,
and derived your claims from a more early race of
ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those
ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in
them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the
vulgar practice of the hour; and you would have
risen with the example to whose imitation you
aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would
have been taught to respect yourselves. Von would
not have chosen to consider the French as a people
of yesterday, as a nation of loW-bom servile wretches
until the emancipating year of 1789. In order to
furnish, at the expense of your honour, an excuse
to your apologists here for several enormities of
yours, you would not have been content to be
represented as a gang of Maroon slaves, suddenly
broke loose from the house of bondage, and there-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 47

fore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to
which you were not accustomed and were ill fitted.
Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to
have you thought — what I, for one, always thought
you — a generous and gallant nation, long misled
to your disadvantage by your high and romantic
sentiments of fidelity, honour, and loyalty ; that
events had been unfavourable to you, but that you
were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile
disposition ; that in your most devoted submission
you were actuated by a principle of public spirit, and
that it was your country you worshipped, in the
person of your king? Had you made it to be under-
stood, that in the delusion of this amiable error
you had gone further than your wise ancestors;
that you were resolved to resume your ancient
privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit of your
ancient and your recent loyalty and honour ; or, if
diffident of yourselves, and not clearly discerning
the almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors,
you had looked to your neighbours in this land, who
had kept alive the ancient principles and models of
the old common law of Europe, meliorated and
adapted to its present state — by following wise ex-
amples you would have given new examples of
wisdom to the world. You would have rendered
the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes of every
worthy mind in every nation. You would have
shamed despotism from the earth, by shewing that
freedom was not only reconcileable, but, as when
well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law. You would
have had an unoppressive but a productive revenue.
You would have had a flourishing commerce to

IS Ul I I.IXTION'S ON Till

/feed it. You would have had a free constitution;
a potent monarchy ; a disciplined army ; a reformed
and venerated clergy; a mitigated hut spirited nobility,
to lead your virtue, not to overlay it ; you would
have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and
to recruit that nobility; you would have had a
protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people,
taught to seek and to recognize the happiness that
is to be found by virtue in all conditions ; in which
consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not
in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false
ideas and vain expectations into men destine;! to
travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves
only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality
which it never can remove ; and which the order of
civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those
whom it must leave in an humble state, as those
whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid,
but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy
career of felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond
any thing recorded in the history of the world ; but
you have shewn that difficulty is good for man.
/ Compute your gains: see what is got by those
extravagant and presumptuous speculations which
have taught your leaders to despise all their pre-
decessors and all their contemporaries, and even to
despise themselves, until the moment in which they
became truly despicable. By following those false
lights, France has bought undisguised calamities at
a higher price than any nation has purchased the
most unequivocal blessings! France has bought
poverty by crime! France has not sacrificed her
virtue to her interest ; but she has abandoned her

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 49

interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All
other nations have begun the fabric of a new govern-
ment, or the reformation of an old, by establishing
originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness,
some rites or other of religion. All other people
have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer
manners, and a system of a more austere and
masculine morality. France, when she let loose the
reins of regal authority, doubled the licence of a
ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent
irreligion in opinions and practices ; and has extended
through all ranks of life, as if she were communicating
some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit,
all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the
disease of wealth and power. This is one of the
new principles of equality in France.

France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient council in the cabinets
of princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics.
She has sanctified the dark suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust ; and taught kings to tremble at
(what will hereafter be called) the delusive plausi-
bilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will con-
sider those who advise them to place an unlimited
confidence in their people, as subverters of their
thrones, as traitors who aim at their destruction,
by leading their easy good-nature, under specious
pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faith-
less men into a participation of their power. This
alone (if there were nothing else) is an irreparable
calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that
your parliament of Paris told your king, that in
calling the states together, he had nothing to fear

F

*)() REFLECTIONS ON THE

but the prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for
the support of the throne. It is right that these
men should hide their heads. It is right that they
should bear their part in the ruin which their counsel
has brought on their sovereign and their country.
Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority
asleep ; to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous
adventures of untried policy; to neglect those
provisions, preparations, and precautions, which
distinguish benevolence from imbecillity, and with-
out which no man can answer for the salutary
effect of any abstract plan of government or of
freedom. For want of these, they have seen the
medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.
They have seen the French rebel against a mild and
lawful monarch, with more fury, outiage, and insult,
than ever any people has been known to rise against
the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary
tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession ;
their revolt was from protection ; their blow was
aimed at a hand holding out graces, favours, and
immunities.

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without
vigour; commerce expiring ;. the revenue unpaid,
yet the people impoverished ; a church pillaged, and
a state not relieved ; civil and military anarchy
made the constitution of the kingdom ; every thing
human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public
credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence ;
and to crown all, the paper securities of new,
precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper

KEVOLUTION IN FRANC U. jl

securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine,
held out as a currency for the support of an empire,
in lieu of the two great recognized species that
represent the lasting conventional credit of mankind,
which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth
from whence they came, when the principle of
property, whose creatures and representatives they
are, was systematically subverted.

Were all these dreadful things necessary? were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle
of determined patriots, compelled to wade through
blood and tumult, to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty ? No ! nothing like it. The
fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings
wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devas-
tation of civil war ; they are the sad but instructive
monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of
profound peace. They are the display of incon-
siderate and presumptuous, because unresisted and
irresistible authority. The persons who have thus
squandered away the precious treasure of their
crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal
and wild waste of public evils (the last stake reserved
for the ultimate ransom of the state) have met in
their progress with little, or rather with no opposition
at all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal
procession than the progress of a war. Their
pioneers have gone before them, and demolished
and laid every thing level at their feet. Not one
drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of
the country they have ruined. They have made no
sacrifices to their projects of greater consequence
than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning

.'j2 reflections on the

thai king, murdering their fellow -citizens, and

bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and
distress, thousands of worthy men and worthy
families. Their cruelty lias not even been the
base result of fear. It has been the effect of their
sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons,
robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and
burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the
cause of all was plain from the beginning.

This unforced choice, this fond election of evil,
would appear perfectly unaccountable, it we did not
consider the composition* oi the National Assembly:
I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as
it now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the
materials of which in a great measure it is composed,
which is of ten thousand times greater consequence
than all the formalities in the world. If we were to
know nothing of this Assembly but by its title and
function, no colours could paint to the imagination
any thing more venerable. In that light the mind
of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as
that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people
collected into one focus, would pause and hesitate in
condemning things even of the very worst aspect.
Instead of blameable, they would appear only
mysterious. But no name, no power, no function.
no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the
men of whom any system of authority is composed,
any other than God, and nature, and education, and
their habits of life have made them. Capacities
beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue
and wisdom may be the objects of their choice; but
their choice confers neither the one nor the other on

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 53

those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands.
They have not the engagement of nature, they have
not the promise of revelation for any such powers.

After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing
which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.
Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank,
some of shining talents ; but of any practical ex-
perience in the state, not one man was to be found.
The best were only men of theory. But whatever
the distinguished few may have been, it is the
substance and mass of the body which constitutes its
tharacter, and must finally determine its direction.
/In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in
a considerable degree, follow. They must conform
their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition
of those whom they wish to conduct : therefore, if
an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in
a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme
degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world,
and for that reason cannot enter into calculation,
w ill prevent the men of talents disseminated through
it from becoming only the expert instruments of
absurd projects ! If, what is the more- likely event,
instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they should
be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of
meretricious glory, then the feeble part of the
assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes
in its turn the dupe and instrument of their designs.
In this political traffic the leaders will be obliged to
bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the
followers to become subservient to the worst designs
of their leaders.

o4 REFLE< riONS ON THE

To secure any degree of sobriety in the pro-
positions made by the Leaders in any public assembly,
they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to
tear those whom they conduct. To lie led any
otherwise than blindly, the followers must -be
qualified, if not for actors, at least tor judges;
they must also be judges of natural weight and
authority. Nothing can secure a steady and
moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that the
body of them should be respectably composed, in
point of condition in life, of permanent property, of
education, and of such habits as enlarge and liberalise
the understanding.

In the calling of the states-general of France, the
first thing that struck me, was a great departure
from the ancient course. I found the representation
for the third estate composed of six hundred persons.
They were equal in number to the representatives
of both the other orders. If the orders were to
act separately, the number would not, beyond the
consideration of the expense, be of much moment.
But when it became apparent that the three orders
were to be melted down into one, the policy and
necessary effect of this numerous representation-
became obvious. A very small desertion from either
of the other two orders must throw the power of
both into the hands of the third. In fact, the whole
power of the state was soon resolved into that body.
Its due composition became therefore of infinitely
the greater importance.

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a
very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I
believe, of the members who attended) was composed

1 REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 55

of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of
distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity;
not of leading advocates, the glory of the har ; not of
renowned professors in universities; but for the far
greater part, as it must in such a number, of the in-
ferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental
members of the profession. There were distinguished
exceptions; but the general composition was of
obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty
* Jocal jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, and the
. whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation,
the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of
village vexation. From the moment I read the list,
I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened,
all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profession
is held becomes the standard of the estimation in
which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the
personal merits of many individual lawyers might
have been, and in many it was undoubtedly very
. considerable, in that military kingdom no part of the
profession had been much regarded, except the high-
est of all, who often united to their professional offices
great family splendour, and were invested with great
power and authority. These certainly were highly
respected, and even with no small degree of awe.
The next rank was not much esteemed ; the mecha-
nical part was in a very low degree of repute.

Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a
body so composed, it must evidently produce the con-
sequences of supreme authority placed in the hands
of men not taught habitually to respect themselves ;

■)C) RE] 1.1 i riuNs ()N THE

who liad no previous fortune in character at stake;
who could not be expected to bear with moderation,
or to conduct with discretion, a power which they
themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their bands. Who could Hatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchant-
ment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordi-
nation, would not be intoxicated with their unpre-
pared greatness? Who could conceive that men
who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active,
of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would
easily fall back into their old condition of obscure
contention, and laborious, low, unprofitable chicaner
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the
state, of which they understood nothing, they most
pursue their private interests, which they understood
but too well? It was not an event depending on
chance or contingency. It was inevitable ; it was
necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.
They must join (if their capacity did not permit them
to lead) in any project which could procure to them
a litigious constitution ; which could lay open to them
those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the
train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the
state, and particularly in all irreat and violent per-
mutations of property. Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose
existence had always depended upon whatever ren-
dered property questionable, ambiguous, and in-
secure? Their objects would be enlarged with their
elevation, but their disposition and habits, and mode
of accomplishing their designs, must remain the
same.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 57

Well ! but these men were to be tempered and re-
strained by other descriptions, of more sober minds,
and more enlarged understandings. Were they then
to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful
dignity of a handful of country clowns who have
seats in that Assembly, some of whom are said not to
be able to read and write ? and by not a greater num-
ber of traders, who, though somewhat more instructed
and more conspicuous in the order of society, had
never known any thing beyond their counting-house?
No ! both these descriptions were more formed to be
overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of
lawyers, than to become their counterpoise. With
such a dangerous disproportion, the whole must needs
be governed by them. To the faculty of law was
joined a pretty considerable proportion of the faculty
of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than
that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation.
Its professors therefore must have the qualities of
men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But
supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and
as with us they do actually, the sides of sick beds are
not the academies for forming statesmen and legis-
lators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds,
who must be eager, at any expense, to change their
ideal paper wealth for the more solid substance of
land. To these were joined men of other descriptions,
from whom as little knowledge of, or attention to, the
interests of a great state was to be expected, and as
little regard to the stability of any institution — men
formed to be instruments, not controls. Such in
general was the composition of the Tiers Etut in the
National Assembly : in which was scarcely to be per-

58 il I I. li I [ONS ON THE

ceived the slightest traces of what we call the natural
landed interest of the country.

We know that the British house of commons,
without shutting its doors to any merit in any class,
is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, rilled
With every tiling illustrious in rank, in descent, in
hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated
talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic distinction,
that the country can afford. But supposing, what
hardly can be supposed as a case, that the house oi
commons should be composed in the same manner
with the Tiers JEtat in France, would this dominion
of chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived
without horror? God forbid I should insinuate' any
thing derogatory to that profession, which is another
priesthood, administering the rites of sacred justice.
But whilst I revere men in the functions which he-
long to them, and would do as much as one man can
do to prevent their exclusion from any, I cannot,
to natter them, give the lie to nature. They are
good and useful in the composition: they must be
mischievous if they preponderate so as virtually to
become the whole. Their very excellence in their
peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for
others. It cannot escape observation, that when men
are too much confined to professional and faculty
haMtS, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent
employment of that narrow circle, they are rather
disabled than qualified for whatever depends on the
know ledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs,
on a comprehensive, connected view of the various
complicated external and internal interests which go to
the formation of that multifarious thing called a state./

fit**

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 59

After all, if the house of commons were to have
a wholly professional and faculty composition, what
is the power of the house of commons, circum-
scribed and shut in by the immoveable barriers of
laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice,
counterpoised by the house of lords, and every mo-
ment of its existence at the discretion of the crown
to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of
the house of commons, direct or indirect, is indeed
great; and long may it be able to preserve its great-
ness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness, at
the full; and it will do so as long as it can keep the
breakers of law in India from becoming the makers of
law for England. The power, however, of the house of
commons, when least diminished, is as a drop of water
in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled
majority of your National Assembly. That Assembly,
since the destruction of the orders, has no funda-
mental law, no strict convention, no respected usage
to restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged
to conform to a fixed constitution, they have a power
to make a constitution which shall conform to their
designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve
as a control on them. What ought to be the heads,
the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified, or that
dare, not only to make laws under a fixed constitu-
tion, but at one heat to strike out a totally new
constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of
it, from the monarch on the throne to the vestry of
a parish? But — ''fools rush in where angels fear to
tread." In such a state of unbounded power, for
undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a
moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to

60 REFLECTIONS OX THE

the function, must be the greatest we can conceive to
happen in the management of human affairs.

Having considered the composition of the third
estate as it stood in its original frame, I took a view
of the representatives of the clergy. There too it
appeared, that full as little regard was had to the
general security of property, or to the aptitude of the
deputies for their public purposes, in the principles
of their election. That election was so contrived as
to send a very large proportion of mere country
curates to the great and arduous work of new-
modelling a state; men who never had seen the state
so much as in a picture; men who knew nothing of
the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village;
who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all
property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, with no
other eye than that of envy ; among whom must be
many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest
dividend in plunder, would readily join in any at-
tempts upon a body of wealth, in which they could
hardly look to have any share except in a general
scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the
active chicaners in the other assembly, these curates
must necessarily become the active coadjutors, or at
best the passive instruments, of those by whom they
had been habitually guided in their petty village
concerns. They too could hardly be the most con-
scientious of their kind, who, presuming upon their
incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust
which led them from their natural relation to their
flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to under-
take the regeneration of kingdoms. This preponde-
rating weight being added to the force of the body <•!

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 61

chicane in the Tiers JStat, completed that momentum
of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of
plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.

To observing men it must have appeared from the
beginning, that the majority of the third estate, in
conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy
as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction
of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient
to the worst designs of individuals in that class. In
the spoil and humiliation of their own order these
individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of
their new followers. To squander away the objects
which made the happiness of their fellows, would be
to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented
men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up
with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise
their own order. One of the first symptoms they
discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition, is
a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake
with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to
love the little platoon we belong to in society, is
the first principle (the germ as it were) of public
affections. It is the first link in the series by which
we proceed towards a love to our country and to
mankind. The interest of that portion of social
arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who
compose it ; and as none but bad men would justify
it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away
for their own personal advantage.

There were, in the time of our civil troubles in
England, (I do not know whether you have any
such in your Assembly in France,) several persons,
like the then Earl of Holland, who, by themselves or

(>•> REFLECTIONS OK THE

their families, had brought an odium on the throne,
by the prodigal dispensation of its bounties towards
them, who afterwards joined iii the rebellions arising
from the discontents of which they were themselves
the cause; men who helped to subvert that throne
to which they owed, some of them their existence,
others all that power which they employed to ruin
their benefactor. If any bounds are set to the
rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that
others are permitted to partake in the objects tiny
would engross, revenge and envy soon till up the
craving void that is left in their avarice. Confounded
by the complication of distempered passions, their
reason is disturbed ; their views become vast and
perplexed; to others inexplicable — to themselves
uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their
unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things.
But in the fog and haze of confusion all is enlarged,
and appears without any limit.

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to
an ambition without a distinct object, ami work with
low instruments and for low ends, the whole com-
position becomes low and base. Does not something
like this now appear in France? Does it not produce
something ignoble and inglorious? a kind of mean-
ness in all the prevalent policy ? a tendency in ail
that is done to lower along with individuals all the
dignity and importance of the state? Other re-
volutions have been conducted by persons, who,
whilst they attempted or effected changes in the
commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by advanc-
ing the dignity of the people whose peace they
troubled. They had long views. They aimed at

REVOLUTION IN FftANCE. 63

the rule, not at the destruction of their country.
They were men of great civil, and great military
talents; and if the terror, the ornament of their age.
They were not like Jew brokers contending with
each other who could best remedy, with fraudulent
circulation and depreciated paper, the wretchedness
and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate
councils. The .compliment made to one of the great
bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman,
a favourite poet of that time, shews what it was he
proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he
accomplished in the success of his ambition :

'• Still as you rise, the stale, exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst' tis chang'd by you ;
Chang'd like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys.''

These disturbers were not so much like men
usurping power, as asserting their natural place in
society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify
the world. Their conquest over their competitors
was by outshining them. The hand that, like a
destroying angel, smote the country, communicated
to it the force and energy under which it suffered.
I do not say (God forbid) — I do not say that the
virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to
their crimes ; but they were some corrective to their
effects. Such was, as I said, our Cromwell. Such
were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and
Colignis. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet
times acted in the spirit of a civil war. Such, as
better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your
Henry the Fourth and your Sully, though nursed in

i>4 i.i i i.i i 1 in- on i in-

civil confusions, and not wholly without some of
their. taint. It is a thing to be wondered at. to
how very soon France, when she bad a moment to
respire, recovered and emerged from the longest and
most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any
nation. Why'.- Because, among all their massacres,
they had not slain the mind in their country.
A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous
of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On
the contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The
organs also of the state, however shattered, existed.
All the prizes of honour* and virtue, all the rewards,
all the distinctions, remained. But your present con-
fusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life
itself. Every person in your country, in a situation
to be actuated by a principle of honour, is disgraced
and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life,
except in a mortified and humiliated indignation.
But this generation will quickly pass away. The
next generation of the nobility will resemble the
artificers, and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers,
and .lews, who will be always their fellows, some-
times their masters. Believe me, Sir, those who
attempt to level, never equalize. In all societies
consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some
description must be uppermost. The levellers
therefore only change and pervert the natural order
of things; they load the edifice of society, by
setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure
requires to be on the ground. The associations of
tailor- and carpenters, of which the republic (of
Paris, lor instance) is composed, cannot be equal to
the situation, into which, by tie1 worst of usurpations.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. G.J

an usurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you
attempt to force them.

The chancellor of France, at the opening of the
states, said, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all
occupations were honourable. If he meant only,
that no honest employment was disgraceful, he
would not have gone beyond the truth. But in
asserting that any thing is honourable, we imply
some distinction in its favour. The occupation of
a hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler,
cannot be a matter of honour to any person — to say
nothing of a number of other more servile employ-
ments. Such descriptions of men ought not to
suffer oppression from the state ; but the state
suffers oppression if such as they, either individually
or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you
think you are combating prejudice, but you are at
war with nature.*

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that
sophistical, captious spirit, or of that uncandid
dulness, as to require, for every general observation
or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives

* Ecclesiasticus, chap, xxxviii. verse 24. 2">. "The wisdom of
a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure : and he that hath
little business shall become wise." — " How can he get wisdom that
holdeth die plough, and that glorieth in the goad ; that driveth oxen,
and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks .'

Ver. 27. "So every carpenter and work-master that labourcth
night and day," &c.

Ver. ,'i.i. " They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit
high in the congregation : they shall not sit on the judges' seat, nor
understand the sentence of judgment : they cannot declare justice
and judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are
spoken."

Ver. 34. " But they will maintain the state of the world."

I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican
church (till lately) lias considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is
taken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth.

/ S 8 «

(if) ui'.l lie TIONS ON THE

and exceptions which reason will presume to be
included in all the general propositions which come
from reasonable men. Vou do not imagine that

I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction,
to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is
no qualification for government but virtue and

wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are
actually found, they have, in whatever state, con-
dition, profession, o"r trade, the passport of heaven
to human place and honour. Woe to the country
which would madly and impiously reject the service
of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious,
that are given to grace and to serve it ; and would
condemn to obscurity every thing formed to diffuse
lustre and glory around a state. Woe to that
country too, that, passing into the opposite extreme,
considers a low education, a mean contracted view
of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a pre-
ferable title to command. Every thing ought to be
open ; but not indifferently to every man. No
rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of
election operating in the spirit of sortition or
rotation, can he generally good in a government
conversant in extensive objects : because they have
no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man
with a view to the duty, or to .accommodate the one
to the other. I do not hesitate to say, that the road
to eminence and power from obscure condition, ought
not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of
course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare tilings,
it ought to pass through some sort of probation.
The temple of honour ought to lie seated on an
eminence. If it he opened through virtue, let it he

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 07

remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by
some difficulty and some struggle.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of
a state, that does not represent its ability as well as
its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active
principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and
timid, it never can be safe from the invasions
of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion,
predominant in the representation. It must be
represented too in great masses of accumulation, or
it is not rightly protected. The characteristic
essence of property, formed out of the combined
principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be
unequal. The great masses therefore which excite
envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the
possibility of danger. Then they form a natural
rampart about the lesser properties in all their
gradations. The same quantity of property which
is, by the natural course, of things, divided among
many, has not the same operation. Its defensive
power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion
each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness
of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by
dissipating the accumulations of others.' The plunder
of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably
small in the distribution to the many. But the
many are not capable of making tins calculation ;
and those who lead them to rapine, never intend
this distribution.

The power of perpetuating our property in our
families is one of the most valuable and interesting
circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends
the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
The possessors of family wealth, and of the dis-

68 REFLECTIONS 01

tmction which attends hereditary possession
most concerned in it) are the natural securities for
this transmission. With us. the house of peers is
formed upon this principle. It is wholly composed
of hereditary property and hereditary distinction,
and made therefore the third of the legislature ; and
in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all
its subdivisions. The house of commons too,
though n<lt necessarily, yet, in fact, is always so
composed in the far greater part. Let those large
proprietors be what they will, (and they have their
chance of being amongst the best,) tiny are at the
very worst the ballast in the vessel of the common-
wealth. Tor though hereditary wealth, and the
rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by
creeping sycophants, and the blind abject admirers
of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow
speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted
coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent regulated
preeminence, some preference (not exclusive appro-
priation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor
unjust, nor impolitic.

It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to
prevail over two hundred thousand. True, if the
constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.
This sort of discourse does well enough with the
lamp-post for it- second : to men who may reason
calmly, it is ridiculous. The will of the many, and
their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice.
A government of live hundred country attornies
and obscure curates is not good for twenty-four
millions of men, though it were chosen !<v eighl and

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 69

forty millions; nor is it the better for being guided
by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed
their trust in order to obtain that power. At present,
you seem in every thing to have strayed out of the
high road of nature. The property of France does
not govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-
jobbing constitution : and as to the future, do you
seriously think that the territory of France, upon
the republican system of eighty-three independent
municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that
compose them,) can ever be governed as one body,
or can ever be set in motion by the impulse of one
mind ? When the National Assembly has completed
its work, it will have accomplished its ruin. These
commonwealths will not long bear a state of sub-
jection to the republic of Paris. They will not bear
that this one body should monopolize the captivity
of the king, and the dominion over the Assembly
calling itself National. Each will keep its own
portion of the spod of the church to itself ; and it
will not suffer either that spod, or the more just
fruits of their industry, or the natural produce of
their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence, or
pamper the luxury, of the mechanics of Paris. In
this they will see none of the equality, under the
pretence of which they have been tempted to throw
off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the
ancient constitution of their country. There can be
no capital city in such a constitution as they have
lately made. They have forgot, that when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually

70 REFLECTIONS on 1111.

'(•ir cquntry. The person whom
they persevere in calling king, has not power left to
him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together
this collection of republics. The republic of Paris

will endeavour indeed to complete the debaucherj
of the army, ami illegally to perpetuate the Assembly,

without resort to ii- constituents, as the means of
continuing its despotism, it will make efforts, by

bi coming the heart of a boundless paper circulation,
to draw every thing to itself; but in vain. All this
policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now
violent.

If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by the
voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my heart
to congratulate you on the choice you have made, or
the -access which lias attended your endeavours.
I can as little recommend to any other nation a
conduct grounded on such principles, and productive
of such effects. That I must leave to those who can
see further into your affairs than 1 am able to do,
and who best know how far your actions are
favourable to their designs. The gentlemen of
the Revolution Society, who were so early in their
congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that
there is some scheme of politics relative to this
country, in which your proceedings may, in some
way, be useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to
have -peculated himself into no small degree of
fervour upon this subject, addresses his auditory in
the following very remarkable words : " I cannot
conclude without recalling particularly to your
recollei msideration which 1 have more than

REVOLUTION IN FEANCE. 71

dnce alluded to, and which prohahly your thoughts
have been all along anticipating — a consideration
with which my mind is impressed more than I can
express; — I mean the consideration of the favour-
ableness of the present times to all exertions in the
cause of liberty."

It is plain that the mind of this political preacher
was at the time big with some extraordinary design ;
and it is very probable that the thoughts of his
audience, who understood him better than I do, did
all along run before him in his reflection, and in the
whole train of consequences to which it led.

Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had
lived in a free country; and it was an error I
cherished, because it gave me a greater liking to
the country I lived in. I was indeed aware, that
a jealous, ever-waking vigilance to guard the trea-
sure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from
decay and corruption, was our best wisdom and our
first duty. However, I considered that treasure
rather as a possession to be secured, than as a prize
to be contended for. I did not discern how the
present time came to be so very favourable to all
exertionsm the cause of freedom. The present time
differs from any other only by the circumstance of
what is doing in France. If the example of that
nation is to have an influence on this, I can easily
conceive why some of their proceedings which have
an unpleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcileable
to humanity, generosity, good faith, and justice, are
palliated with so much milky good-nature towards
the actors, and borne with so much heroic fortitude
towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to

!■!■ i.i i ; I - 1111

discredit the authority of an example we mean to
follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very

natural question, — What is that cause of liberty,
and what are those exertions in its favour, to which
the example of France is so singularly auspicious?
Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws,
all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of
the kingdom? Is every land-mark of the country to
be done away in favour of a geometrical and arith-
metical constitution? Is the house of lords to lie
voted useless? Is episcopacy to be abolished? Are
the church lands to lie sold to Jews and jobber
given to bribe new-invented municipal republics into
a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxe> to be
voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a
patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents? Are
silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of
the land tax and the malt tax, for the support of the
naval strength of this kingdom? Are all 01
ranks, and distinctions, to be confounded, that out of
universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy,
three or four thousand democracies should be formed
into eighty-three, and that they may all, by some
sort of unknown attractive power, lie organized into
one? For this great end. is the army to be seduced
from its discipline and its fidelity, first by every
kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible pre-
cedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are
■ urates to be seduced from their bishop-, bj
holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out
of the spoils of their own order? Are the Citisens of
London to be drawn from their allegiance, by feeding
them at the expense of their fellow-subjects ? Is

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 73

a eumpulsory paper currency to be substituted in the
place of the legal coin of this kingdom ? Is what
remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to
be employed in the wild project of maintaining two
armies to watch over and to fight with each other?
If these are the ends and means of the Revolution
Society, I admit they are well assorted ; and France
may furnish them, for both with precedents hi
point.

I see that your example is held out to shame us.
I know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race,
rendered passive by finding our situation tolerable,
ahd prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from ever
attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in
Fiance began by affecting to admire, almost to adore,
the British constitution ; but, as they advanced,
came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt.
The friends of your National Assembly amongst us
have full as mean an opinion of what was formerly
thought the glory of their country. The Revolution
Society has discovered that the English nation is not
free. They are convinced that the inequality in our
representation is a " defect in our constitution so
rp-oss and palpable, as to make it excellent chiefly in
form and theory."* That a representation in the
legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all con-
stitutional liberty in it, but of "all legitimate novern-
ment ; that without it a government is nothing but an
usurpation;" — that "when the representation is
partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only partially;
and if extremely partial it trives only a semblance ;

■ Discourse on the Love of our Country, Sd, edit p

H

74

and it not only extremely partial, but corruptly
chosen, it becomes a nuisance." Dr. Price con-
siders this inadequacy of representation as our /v«-
damental grievance ; and though, as to the corruption
of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not
yet arrived to its full perfection <>t' depravity, he
fears that "nothing will he done towards gaining for
us this essential blessing, until some great dims, of
power again provokes our resentment, or some great
calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the
acquisition of a pure on,/ <</>tnl representation />//
other countries, whilst we are mocked with the
s/iadoir, kindles our shame." To this he subjoins
a note in these words : " A representation chosen
chiefly by the treasury, and a few thousands of the
dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their
votes."

You will smile here at the consistency of those
democratists, who. when they are not on their guard,
treat the humbler part of the community with the
greatest contempt, whilst at the same time they
pretend to make them the depositories of all power.
It would require a long discourse to point out to
you the many fallacies that lurk in the generality
and equivocal nature of the terms " inadequate repre-
sentation." I shall only say here, in justice to th.ar
old-fashioned constitution under which we have
long prospered, that our representation has
found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for
which a representation of the people can be desired
or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution
to shew the contrary. To detail the particulars in
which it is found II to I its ends, would

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. /O

demand a treatise on our practical constitution.
I state here the doctrine of the Revolutionists, only
that you and others may see what an opinion these
gentlemen entertain of the constitution of their
country, and why they seem to think that some
great abuse of power, or some great calamity, as
giving a chance for the blessing of a constitution
according to their ideas, would be much palliated to
their feelings ; you see why they are so much ena-
moured of your fair and equal representation, which
being once obtained, the same effects might follow.
You see they consider our house of commons as only
" a semblance," "a form," "a theory," " a shadow,"
'• a mockery," perhaps "a nuisance."

These gentlemen value themselves on being sys-
tematic ; and not without reason. They must
therefore look on this gross and palpable defect of
representation, this fundamental grievance (so they
call it) as a thing not only vicious in itself, but as
rendering our whole government absolutely illegi-
timate, and not at all better than a downright
usurpation. Another revolution, to get rid of this
illegitimate and usurped government, would of course
be perfectly justifiable, if not absolutely necessary.
Indeed their principle, if you observe it with any
attention, goes much further than to an alteration in
the election of the house of commons ; for, if popular
representation, or choice, is necessary to the legi-
timacy of all government, the house of lords is, at
one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood.
That house is no representative of the people at all,
even in "semblance or in form." The case of the
crown is altogether as bad. In vain the crown may

J6

,.1 I I 1 I I lM\- ..\ | HI

endeavour to screen itself against these gentlemen
by the authority of the establishment made on the
Revolution. The Revolution which is resorted to
for a title, on their system, wants a title itself. The
Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon
a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by i house of lords not representing
any one but themselves; and by a house of com-
mons exactly such as the present, that is, as they
term it, by a mere "shadow and mockery" of
representation.

Some of them are so heated with their particular
religious theories, that they give more than hints
that the fall of the civil powers, with all the dreadful
consequences of that fall, provided they might be of
service to their theories, would not be unacceptable
to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man
amongst them of great authority, and certainly of
great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between
church and state, says, " perhaps wt must wait for
the fall of the civil powers before this most un-
natural alliance be broken. Calamitous no doubt
will that time be. But what convulsion in the
political world ought to be a subject of lamentation,
if it be attended with so desirable an effect?" You
see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are
prepared to view the greatest calamities which can
befal their country.

It is no wonder, therefore, that with these ideas of
everything in their constitution and government at
home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and
usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look
abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 77

Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is
vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors,
the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form
of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the
solid test of long experience, and an increasing public
strength and national prosperity. They despise ex-
perience as the wisdom of unlettered men ; and as
for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a
mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all
examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and
acts of parliament. They have " the rights of men."
Against these there can be no prescription ; against
these no agreement is binding : these admit no
temperament, and no compromise : any thing with-
held from their full demand is so much of fraud and
injustice. Against these their rights of men let no
government look for security in the length of its
continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its
administration. The objections of these speculatists,
if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are
as valid against such an old and beneficent govern-
ment, as against the most violent tyranny, or the
greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with
governments, not on a question of abuse, but a
question of competency, and a question of title
I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of
their political metaphysics. Let them be their

amusement in the schools " Ilia sejactat in aula —

Mollis, et clauso venlorum carcere regnet." — But
let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter,
to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and t<>
break up the fountains of the great deep to over-
whelm US.

78 Kl i 1 I > riONS on THE

Far am I from denying in theory — full as far i<
my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of
power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men.
In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean
to injure those which are real, and are such as their
pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil
society be made for the advantage of man. all the
advantages for which it i^ made become his right.
It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is
only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a
right to live by that rule; they have a right to
do justice: as between their fellows, whether their
fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupa-
tion. They have a right to the fruits of their
industry, and to the means of making their industry
fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of
their parents: to the nourishment and improvement
of their offspring : to instruction in life, and to
consolation in death. Whatever each man can
separately do, without trespassing upon others, he
has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to
a fair portion of all which society, with all its
combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour.
But as to the share of power, authority, and direction
which each individual ought to have in the manage-
ment of the state, that I must deny to be amongst
the direct original rights of man in civil society ; for
I have in my contemplation the civil social man,
ami no other. It is a thing to be settled by
convention.

If civil society he the offspring of convention,
that convention must he its law. That convention
must limit ami modify ill the descriptions of consti-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 79

tution which are formed under it. Every sort of
legislative, judicial, or executory power, are its
creatures. They can have no being in any other
state of things ; and how can any man claim, under
the conventions of civil society, rights which do not
so much as suppose its existence — rights which are
absolutely repugnant to it ? One of the first motives
to civil society, and which becomes one of its
fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in
his oicn cause. By this each person has at once
divested himself of the first fundamental right of
uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and
to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to
be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great
measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the
first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of
an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he
may obtain justice, he gives up his right of de-
termining what it is in points the most essential, to
him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes
a surrender in trust of the whole of it.

Government is not made in virtue of natural
rights, which may and do exist in total independence
of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in
a much greater degree of abstract perfection : but
their abstract perfection is their practical defect.
By having a right to every thing, they want every
thing. Government is a contrivance of human
wisdom to provide for human ivants. Men have
a right that these wants should be provided for by
this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned
the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint
upon their passions. Society requires not only that

the passions of individuals should be subjected, but
that even in the mass and body, as well as in the
individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently
be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions
brought into subjection. This can only be done by
u power out of themselves ; and not, in the exercise
of its function, subject to that will and to those
passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue.
In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their
liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.
But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with
times and circumstances, and admit of infinite molli-
fications, they cannot lie settled upon any abstract
rule ; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them
upon that principle.

The moment you abate any thing from the full
rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer
any artificial positive limitation upon those rights,
from that moment the whole organization of govern-
ment becomes a consideration of convenience. This
it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the
due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most
delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep
knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the
various ends which are to be -pursued by the me-
chanism of civil institutions. The state is to have
recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers.
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right
to food or medicine ? The question is upon the
method of procuring and administering them. In
that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the
aid of the farmer and thi . rather than the

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 81

professor of metaphysics. The science of construct-
ing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming
it, is, like every other experimental science, not to
be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience
that can instruct us in that practical science; because
the real effects of moral causes are not always
immediate ; but that which in the first instance is
prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation;
and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects
it produces in the beginning. The reverse also
happens ; and very plausible schemes, with very
pleasing commencements, have often shameful and
lamentable conclusions. In states there are often
some obscure and almost latent causes, things which
appear at first view of little moment, on which
a very great part of its prosperity or adversity may
most essentially depend. The science of government
being therefore so practical in itself, and intended
for such practical purposes, a matter which requires
experience, and even more experience than any
person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious
and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution
that any man ought to venture upon pulling down
an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable
degree for ages the common purposes of society, or
on building it up again, without having models and
patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

These metaphysic rights entering into common
life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense
medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from
their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and com-
plicated mass of human passions and concerns, the
primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of

hi 1 l.l i l [ON8 ON THE

refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to
talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of

their original direction. The nature of man is
intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest
possible complexity; and therefore no simple dis-
position or direction of power can be suitable either
to man's nature, or to the quality of bis affairs.
When 1 hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed
at and boasted of in any new political constitutions,
I am at no loss to deride that the artificers are
grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent
of their duty. The simple governments are fun-
damentally defective, to say no worse of them.
If you were to contemplate society in but one
point of view, all these simple modes of polity are
infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer
its single end much more perfectly than the more
complex is able to attain all its complex pur]
But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly
and anomalously answered, than that, while some
parts are provided for with great exactness, others
might he totally neglected, or perhaps materially
injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.

The pretended rights of these theorists are all
extremes : and in proportion as they are meta-
physically true, they are morally and politically
The rights of men are in a sort of middle,
incapable of definition, but not impossible to be
discerned. The rights of men in governments
their advantages ; and these are often in balances
between differences of good ; in compromises some-
times between good and evil, and sometimes
between evil and evil. Political reason is a com-

REVOLUTION IN PRANCE. 83

puting principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying,
and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or ma-
thematically, true moral denominations.

By these theorists the right of the people is almost
always sophistically confounded with their power.
The body of the community, whenever it can come
to act, can meet with no effectual resistance ; but till
power and right ar,e the same, the whole body of them
has no right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of
all virtues, prudence. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit;
for though a pleasant writer said, Liceat perire poetis,
when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped
into the flames of a volcanic revolution, Ardentemfri-
gidus /Etnam insiluit, I consider such a frolic rather
as an unjustifiable poetic licence, than as one of the
franchises of Parnassus ; and whether he were poet,
or divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this
kind of right, I think that more wise, because more
charitable, thoughts would urge me rather to save
the man, than to preserve his brazen slippers as the
monuments of his folly.

The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are riot shamed
out of their present course, in commemorating the
fact, will cheat many out of the principles, and de-
prive them of the benefits, of the Revolution they
commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked
this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or
the practice of making the extreme medicine of the
constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of
society dangerously valetudinary: it is taking pe-
fiodical doses of mercury sublimate, and swallowing

84 B HONS ON rill

down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our

love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes

and wears out, by a vulvar and prostituted use. the
spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great
occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman
servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordi-
nary exercise of boys at school— cum perir/iit aaoos
classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordinary state of
things, it produces in a country like ours the worst
effects, even on the cause of that liberty which it
abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant
speculation. Almost all the high-bred republicans
of my time have, after a short space, become the most
decided thorough-paced courtiers; they soon left the
business of a tedious, moderate, but practical resis-
tance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxi-
cation of their theories, they have slighted as not
much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de-
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never
intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing
to have it magnificent. But even in cases where
rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in these
ranting speculations, the issue has been much the
same. These professors, finding their extreme prin-
ciples not applicable to cases which call only for a
qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance,
in such eases employ no resistance at all. It is with
them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding
their schemes of politics not adapted to the state of
the world in which they live, they often come to think
lightly of all public principle: and are ready, on their
part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 85

find of very trivial value. Some indeed are of more
steady and persevering natures; but these are eager
politicians out of parliament, who have little to tempt
them to abandon their favourite projects. They have
some change in the church or state, or both, con-
stantly in their view. When that is the case, they
are always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure con-
nexions. For, considering their speculative designs
as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the
state as of no estimation, they are at best indifferent
about it. They see no merit in the good, and no
fault in the vicious management of public affairs; they
rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revo-
lution. They see no merit or demerit in any man,
or any action, or any political principle, any further
than as they may forward or retard their design of
change: they therefore take up, one day, the most
violent and stretched prerogative, and another time
the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass
from the one to the other without any sort of regard
to cause, to person, or to party.

In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution,
and in the transit from one form of government to
another — you cannot see that character of men exactly
in the same situation in which we see it in this coun-
try. With us it is militant — with you it is trium-
phant; and you know how it can act when its power is
commensurate to its will. I would not be supposed to
confine those observations to any description of men,
or to comprehend all men of any description within
them — No! far from it. I am as incapable of that
injustice, as I am of keeping terms with those who
profess principles of extremes; and who, under the

i

86 REFLECT] , hi:

name of religion, teach little else than wild and dan-
gerous politics. The worst of these politics of revo-
lution is this: they temper and harden the breast, in
order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are
sometimes used on extreme occasions. But as I
occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gra-
tuitous taint; and tin moral sentiments suffer not
a little, when no political purpose is served by the
depravation. This sort of people are so taken up
with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgotten bis nature. Without opening
one new avenue to the understanding, they have suc-
ceeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart.
They have perverted in themselves, and in those that
attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the
human breast.

This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathe-;
nothing but this spirit through all the political part.
Plots, massacres. tions, seem to some people

a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap,
bloodies* reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat
and vapid to their taste. There must be a great
change of scene; there must be a magnificent
effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the
imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment
of sixty years' security, and the still unanimatiug re-
pose of public prosperity. The preacher found them
all in the French Revolution. This inspires a juvenile
warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm
kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his
peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from
the Pisgah of bis pulpit, the free, moral, happy,
flourishing, and glori< •; France, as in a bird-

BETOLUTION IN FRANCE. 87

eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into
the following rapture :

" What an eventful period is this! I am thankful
that I have lived to it ; I could almost say, Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes
have seen thy salvation. I have lived to see a dif-
fusion of knowledge, which has undermined super-
stition and error.— I have lived to see the rights of
men better understood than ever ; and nations panting

for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it

I have lived to see thirty millions of people, indig-
nant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding
liberty with an irresistible voice. Their king led in
triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering
himself to his subjects."*

Before I proceed further, I have to remark, that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great ac-
quisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused
in this age. The last century appears to me to haye
been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in
a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of
Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of that
period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the
triumph of France. On the trial of the Rev. Hugh
Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that when
King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the
Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the triumph.
" I saw," says the witness, "his majesty in the coach

* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhihited, expresses himself
thus: — "A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering sub-
jects, is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the
prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my
life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification." These gentlemen
agree marvellously in their feelings.

88 REFLECTIONS ON Till

with six horses, and Peters riding before the king,
triumphing." Dr. Price, when lie talks as if he had
made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after
the commmencement of the king's trial, this pre-
cursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer
at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very tri-
umphantly chosen his place, said, " I have prayed and
preached these twenty years; and now 1 may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
tit-part in peace, for nunc eyes hare seen tlnj sal-
ration."* Peters had^ not the fruits of his prayer:
for he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor in
peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his
followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice
to the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt
al the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this poor
good man. Put we owe it to his memory and his
sufferings, that he had as much illumination, and as
much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all tin
superstition and error which might impede the great
business lie was engaged in, as any who follow and
repeat after him, in this age, which would assume to
itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of the rights
of men, and all the glorious consequences of that
knowledge.

After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, hut agrees per-
fectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648,
the Revolution Society, the fabricators of govern-
ments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs,
electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph.
strutting with a proud consciousness of the diffusion

Trials, vol. . p

REVOLUTION IN it.iMi 89

of knowledge, of which every member had obtained
so large a share in the donative, were in haste to
make a generous diffusion of the knowledge they had
thus gratuitously received. To make this bountiful
communication, they adjourned from the church in
the Old Jewry, to the London Tavern; where the
same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his oracular
tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and
carried the resolution, or address of congratulation,
transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National
Assembly of France.

I find a preacher of the gospel profaning the
beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called
"Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of
our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an
inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid,
atrocious, and afflicting spectacle, that perhaps
ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of
mankind. This "leading in triumph," a thing in
its best form unmanly and irreligious, which fills
our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must
shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born
mind. Several English were the stupified and indig-
nant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we
have been strangely deceived) a spectacle more
resembling a procession of American savages, enter-
ing into Onondago, after some of their murders
called victories, and leading into hovels hung round
with scalps, their captives, overpowered with the
scoffs and buffets of women as ferocious as them-
selves, much more than it resembled the triumphal
pomp of a civilized, martial nation; — if ;i civilized
nation, or any men who had a sense of generosity,

i3

90 UKFLli TIONS ON TUB

were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen
and afflicted.

Tins, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. 1 must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation, in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph, or the actors in it; and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they
may make upon the subject must be destitute even
of the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The
apology of that Assembly is found in their situation ;
but when we approve what they must bear, it is in us
the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.

With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They
sit in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic: they
have their residence in a city whose constitution has
emanated neither from the charter of their king, nor
from their legislative power. There they are sur-
rounded by an army not raised either by the authority
of their crown, or by their command; and which, if
they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly
dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang of as-
sassins had driven away all the men of moderate
minds and moderating authority amongst them, and
left them as a sort of dregs and refuse, under the ap-
parent lead of those in whom they do not so much as
pretend to have any confidence. There they sit, in
mockery of legislation, repeating in resolutions the
words of those whom they detest and despise. Cap-
tives themselves, they compel a captive king to issue
as royal edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 91

of their most licentious and giddy coffee-houses. It
is notorious, that all their measures are decided be-
fore they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that,
under the terror of the bayonet and the lamp-post
and the torch to their houses, they are obliged to
adopt all the crude and desperate measures suggested
by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all con-
ditions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found
persons, in comparison of whom Catiline would be
thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man of sobriety
and moderation. Nor is it in these clubs alone that
the public measures are deformed into monsters.
They undergo a previous distortion in academies, in-
tended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which
are set up in all the places of public resort. In these
meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as
it is daring, and violent, and perfidious, is taken for
the mark of superior genius. Humanity and com-
passion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and
ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered
as treason to the public. Liberty is always to be
estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure.
Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, per-
petrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the
good order of future society. Embracing in their
arms the carcases of base criminals, and promoting
their relations on the title of their offences, they drive
hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by
forcing them to subsist by beggary or by crime.

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the
farce of deliberation with as little decency as liberty.
They act like the comedians of a fair before a riotous
audience; they art amidst the tumultuous cries of

92 ur.FLi i noNs .in phi

a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to
shame, who, according to their insolent fancies, direct,
control, applaud, explode them; and sometimes mix
and take their seats amongst them; domineering over
them with a strange mixture of servile petulance and
proud, presumptuous authority. As they have in-
verted order in all things, the gallery is in the place
of the house. This Assembly, which overthrows
kings and kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy
and aspect of a grave legislative body — nee color im-
perii, nee from erat uHu senatus. They have a power
given to them, like that of the evil principle, to sub-
vert and destroy; but none to construct, except such
machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is at-
tached to, national representative assemblies, but must
turn with horror and disgust from such a profane
burlesque, and abominable perversion of that sacred
institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics,
must alike abhor it. The members of your Assembly
must themselves groan under the tyranny of which
they have all the shame, none of the direction, and
little of the profit. I am sure many of the members who
compose even the majority of that body, must feel as
I do, notwithstanding the applauses of the Revolution
Society. — Miserable king ! miserable Assembly ! How
must that assembly be silently scandalized with those
of their members, who could call a day which seemed
to blot the sun out of heaven. " //// beau jourt"-*
How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing
Others, who thought tit to declare to them, "that the

« 6th of October, '

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 93

vessel of the state would fly forward in her course
towards regeneration with more speed than ever,"
from the stiff gale of treason and murder, which pre-
ceded our preacher's triumph ! What must they have
felt, whilst, with outward patience and inward in-
dignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent
gentlemen in their houses, that "the blood spilled
was not the most pure? " What must they have felt,
when they were besieged by complaints of disorders
which shook their country to its foundations, at being
compelled coolly to tell the complainants, that they
were under the protection of the law, and that they
would address the king (the captive king) to cause
the laws to be enforced for their protection; when
the enslaved ministers of that captive king had for-
mally notified to them, that there were neither law,
nor authority, nor power left to protect? What must
they have felt at being obliged, as a felicitation on the
present new year, to request their captive king to
forget the stormy period of the last, on account of
the great good which he was likely to produce to his
people; to the complete attainment of which good
they adjourned the practical demonstrations of their
loyalty, assuring him of their obedience, when he
should no longer possess any authority to command?
This address was made with much good-nature
and affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions
in France must be reckoned a considerable revo-
lution in their ideas of politeness. In England we
are said to learn manners at second-hand from your
side of the water, and that we dress our behaviour in
the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the old
iiit: and have not so far conformed to the new

94 REFLECTIONS OX THE

Parisian mode of good-breeding, as to think it quite
in the most refined strain of delicate compliment
(whether in condolence or congratulation) to say,
to the most humiliated creature that crawls upon the
earth, that great public benefits are derived from the
murder of his servants, the attempted assassination
of himself and of his wife, and the mortification,
disgrace, and degradation, that he has personally
suffered. It is a topic of consolation which our
ordinary of Newgate would be too humane to use
to a criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should
have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that
he is liberalized by the vote of the National
Assembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the
herald's college of the rights of men, would be
too generous, too gallant a man, too full of the sense
of his new dignity, to employ that cutting consola-
tion to any of the persons whom the kze nation
might bring under the administration of his executive
powt r.

A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is
well calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness,
and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory.
Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty,
powdered with all the ingredients of scorn and con-
tempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of "the balm
of hurt minds," the cup of human misery full to the
brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.

Yielding to reasons, at least as forcible as those
which were so delicately urged in the compliment
on the new year, the king of France will probably
endeavour to forget these events and that compli-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 95

ment. But history, who keeps a durable record of
all our acts, and exercises her awful censure over
the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not
forget either those events, or the era of this liberal
refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History
will record, that on the morning of the 6th of
October, 1789, the king and queen of France, after
a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter,
lay down, under the pledged security of public faith,
to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and
troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the
queen was first startled by the voice of the centinel
at her door, who cried out to her to save herself by
flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could
give — that they were upon him, and he was dead.
Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel
ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed
into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with
a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the
bed, from whence this persecuted woman had but
just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways
unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek
refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure
of his own life for a moment.

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen,
and their infant children (who once would have been
the pride and hope of a great and generous people),
were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the
most splendid palace in the world, which they left
swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and
strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcases.
Thence they were conducted into the capital of their
kingdom. Two had been selected from the unpro-

!)f! REFLECTIONS ON nil

voked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was
made of the gentlemen of birth and family who •

composed the king's body guard. These two
gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of
justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the
block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace.
Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the
procession ; whilst the royal captives who followed
in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the
horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances,
and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable
abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused
shape of the vilest of women. After they had been
made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness
of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve
miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under
a guard composed of those very soldiers who had
thus conducted them through this famous triumph,
lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now con-
verted into a Bastile for kings.

Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to
be commemorated with grateful thanksgiving? to be
offered to the divine humanity with fervent prayei
and enthusiastic ejaculation V — These Thehan and
Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded
only in the Old Jewry. 1 assure you. kindle pro-
phetic enthusiasm in the minds hut of very few-
people in this kingdom ; although a saint and
apostle, who may have revelations of his own, and
who has so completely vanquished all the mean
superstitions of the heart, may incline to think it
pious and decorous to compare it with the entrance
into the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 97

in a holy temple by a venerable sage, and not
long before not worse announced by the voice of
angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds.

At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of
unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the
sufferings of monarchs make a delicious repast to
some sort of palates. There were reflections which
might serve to keep this appetite within some bounds
of temperance. But when I took one circumstance
into my consideration, I was obliged to confess, that
much allowance ought to be made for the Society,
and that the temptation was too strong for common
discretion ; I mean, the circumstance of the Io
Paean of the triumph, the animating cry which
called for " nil the bishops to be hanged on the
lamp-posts,"* might well have brought forth a burst
of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences of this
happy day. I allow to so much enthusiasm some
little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet
to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving
on an event which appears like the precursor of the
Millennium, and the projected fifth monarchy, in the
destruction of all church establishments. There
was, however, (as in all human affairs there is,) in
the midst of this joy something to exercise the
patience of these worthy gentlemen, and to try the
long-suffering of their faith. The actual murder of
the king and queen, and their child, was wanting to
the other auspicious circumstances of this "beautiful
dap." The actual murder of the bishops, though
called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also

* Tons les Eveques a la lanterne.

98 > riONS ON THE

wanting. A group of regicide and sacrili

slaughter was indeed boldly sketched, but it was
only sketched. It unhappily was left unfinished in
this trreat history-piece of the massacre of innocents.
What hardy pencil of a great master, from the
school of the rights of men, will finish it, is to be
seen hereafter. The age has not yet the complete
benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has
undermined superstition and error; and the king of
France wants another object or two, to consign to
oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is
to ari.se from his own sufferings, and the patriotic
crimes of an enlightened age.*

* It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject
by an eye-witness. That eye-witness was one of the most I
intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one i>:
the most active and zealous reformers of the state, lie was
to secede from the Assembly ; and he afterwards became a voluntary
exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, and the
dispositions of men who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them,
have taken the lead in public affairs.

Extract of M. deLally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend.

" Parlons du parti que j'ai pris ; il est bien Justine dans ma
conscience. — Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblee plus cou-
pable encore, ne meritoicnt que je me justifie ; mais j'ai a cuur
que vous, et les personnes qui pensent comme \ ondam-

nent pas. — Ma sante, je vous jure, me rendoit mes foncrjon
sibles ; mais meme en les mettanl de c6t4 il a etc au dessus de mes
forces de supporter plus longtems l'horreur que me causoit ce
— ces tetes — cette reine presque igorgie, — ce roi, aniene telave, —
entrant a Paris, au milieu de ses assassins, et precede des tStes de
ses malheureux gardes — ecs perfides janissaires, ces assase
femmes cannibales, ee eri de iocs i.r.s f.vf.iiies a la i.an .
dans le moment oil le roi entre sa capitale avec deux evSqoes de son
conseil dans sa voiture. Un coup de fusil, que j'ai vu tirer dans un
des corosses de In reine. M. liailly appellant cela un beau jour.
L*assemblee ayant declare froidement le matin, qu'il n'i'toi' p
sa dignite d'aller toute entiere environner le roi. M. Mirab
sant impunement dans cette assemblee, que le vaisseau di
loin d'etre arrcte dans sa course, a'elanceroil avec plus ile rapidite
que jamais vers sa regeneration. M. Barnave, riant avec lui,
quand des flots de Ban c mlaient autoui de nous. Le vertueux

REVOLUTION IN FRANC L. 99

Although this work of our new light and know-
ledge did not go to the length that in all probability
it was intended it should be carried, yet I must
think "that such treatment of any human creatures
must be shocking to any but those who are made for
accomplishing revolutions. But I cannot stop here.
Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, and
not being illuminated by a single ray of this new-
sprung modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the
exalted rank of the persons suffering, and particularly
the sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of the
descendants of so many kings and emperors, with
the tender age of royal infants, insensible only
through infancy and innocence of the cruel outrages

Mounier* echappant par miracle a vingt assassins, qui avoient voulu
faire de sa tete un trophee de plus. Voila ce qui me fit jurer de ne
plus mettre le pied dans eette carer ne d'Antropvp/iagcs [the National
Assembly] ou je n'avois plus de force d'elever la voix, ou depuis six
semaines je l'avois elevee en vain.

" Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnetes gens, ont pense que le dernier
effort a faire pour le bien etoit d'en sortir. Aucune idee de crainte
nes'est approchee de moi. Je rougirois de m'en defendre . J'avois
encore reeu sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que
ceux qui l'ont enivre de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudisse-
ments, dont d'autres auroient ete flattes, et qui m'ont fait fremir.
C'est a l'indignation, c'est a rhoneur, c'est aux convulsions phy-
siques, que leseul aspect du sang me fait eprouver que j'ai cede. On
brave un seul mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut
ft.-, utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion
publique ou privee n'ont le droit de me condamner a souifrir inutile-
mjnt mille supplices par minute, et a perir de desespoir, de rage, au
milieu des triomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arreter. lis me pros-
criront, ils confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne
les verrai plus. Viola ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la
montrer, la laisser copier ; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront
pas ; ce ne sera alors moi qui auroit en tort de leur donner."

This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentle-
man of the Old Jewry. — See Mons. Mounier's 'narrative of these
transactions; a man of honour, and virtue, and talents, and there-
fore a fugitive.

* N. P. Mr. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly.
He has since been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest
assertors of liberty.

100 BE] LEI ; ni

tu which their parents were exposed, instead of
being a subject of exultation, adds not a little to my
'ility on that most melancholy occasion.
1 hear that the august person, who was the
principal object of our preacher's triumph, though
he supported himself, felt much on that shameful
occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his
wife and his children, and the faithful guards of his
person, that were massacred in cold blood about
him : as a prince, it became him to feel for the
strange and frightful transformation of his civilized
subjects, and to be inure grieved for them, than
solicitous tor himself. It derogates little from his

fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour of
bis humanity. I am very sorry to say it, very sorry
indeed, that such personages are in a situation in
which it is not becoming to praise the virtues of the
great.

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady,
the other object of the triumph, has borne that day,
one i- interested that beings made for suffering
should suffer well,) and that she bears all the suc-
ceeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of
her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile
of her friends, and the insulting adulation of ad-
dresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated
wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner suited
to her rank and race, and becoming the offspring
of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and her
courage; that, like her. she has lofty sentiments;
that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron ;
that in the last extremity she will save herself from

REVOLUTION IN FUANCE. 101

the last disgrace ; and that if she must fall, she will
fall by no ignoble hand.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw
the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at
Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb,
which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delight-
ful vision. I saw her just above the horizon,
decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she
just began to move in, — glittering like the morning-
star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh ! what
a revolution ! and what a heart must I have, to
contemplate without emotion that elevation and
that fall ! Little did I dream, when she added
titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant,
respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to
carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed
in that bosom; little did I dream that I should
have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in
a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of
honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand
swords must have leaped from their scabbards to
avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophis-
ters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded ;
and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
Never, never more shall we behold that generous
loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that
dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart,
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit
of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of
life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of
manly sentiment and heroic enterprize, is gone ! It
is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of

k 3

102 REFLECTIONS ON THE

honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which in-
spired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which
ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice
itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had
its origin in the ancient chivalry j and the principle,
though varied in its appearance by the varying state
of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through
a long succession of generations, even to the time
we live in. If it should ever be totally extinguished,
the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has
given its character to modern Europe. It is this
which has distinguished it under all its forms of
government, and distinguished it to its advantage,
from the states of Asia, and possibly from those
states which flourished in the most brilliant periods
of the antique world. It was this which, without
confounding ranks, had produced a noble, equality,
and handed it down through all the gradations of
social life. It was this opinion which mitigated
kings into companions, and raised private men to
be fellows with kings. Without force or opposition,
it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it
obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of
social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit
to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of
laws to be subdued by manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the plea
illusions which made power gentle, and obedience
liberal, which harmonized the different shades of
life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incor-
porated into politics the sentiments which beautify
and soften private society are to be dissolved by

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 103

this new conquering empire of light and reason.
All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn
off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the
wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart
owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary
to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature,
and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are
to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and anti-
quated fashion.

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man,
a queen is but a woman ; a woman is but an animal,
and .an animal not of the highest order. All homage
paid to the sex in general as such, and without
distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and
folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, are
but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence
by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king,
or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are only com-
mon homicide ; and if the people are by any chance,
or in any way, gainers by it, a sort of homicide much
the most pardonable, and into which we ought not
to make too severe a scrutiny.

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy,
which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy
understandings, and which is as void of solid
wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance,
laws are to be supported only by their own terrors,
and by the concern which each individual may find
in them from his own private speculations, or can
spare to them from his own private interests. In
the groves of their academy, at the end of every
visto, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is
left which engages the affections <ni the part of the

104 !IS ON i id

commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic
philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied,
if I may use the expression, in persons ; so as to
create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attach-
ment. But that sort of reason which banishes the
affections is incapable of filling their place. These
public affections, combined with manners, I
quired sometimes as supplements, Bomethx
correctives, always as aids to law. The precept
given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for
the construction of, poems, is equally true as to
states : Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia
sunto. There ought to be a system of maun
every nation, which a well-formed mind would In-
disposed to relish. To make us love our country.
our country ought to be lovely.

But power, of some kind or other, will survive
the shock in which manners and opinions perish j
and it will find other and worse means for its sup-
port. The usurpation which, in order to subvert
ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles,
will hold power by arts similar to those by which it
has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous
spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear.
freed both kings and subjects from the precaution
of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men,
plots and assassinations will be anticipated by pre-
ventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that
long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form
the political code of all power, not standing on its
own honour, and the honour of those who are to
obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when
subjects are rebels from principle.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 105

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken
away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From
that moment we have no compass to govern us ;
nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.
Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a
flourishing condition the day on which your Revolu-
tion was completed. How much of that prosperous
state was owing to the spirit of our old manners and
opinions, is not easy to say ; but as such causes
cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must
presume that, on the whole, their operation was
beneficial.

We are but too apt to consider things in the state
in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting
to the causes by which they have been produced,
and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more
certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and
all the good things which are connected with manners
and with civilization, have, in this European world
of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and
were indeed the result of both combined, — I mean
the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion.
The nobility and the clergy — the one by 'profession,
the other by patronage — kept learning in existence,
even in the midst of arms and confusions, and
whilst governments were rather in their causes, than
formed. Learning paid back what it received to
nobility and to priesthood ; and paid it with usury,
by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their
minds. Happy if they had all continued to know
their indissoluble union, and their proper place!
Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had
been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not

106 REFLECTIONS ON 1HE

aspired to be the master ! Along with its natural .,
protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into
the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a
swinish multitude.

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than
they are always willing to own to ancient manners,
so do other interests which we value full as much as
they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and
manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians,
are themselves perhaps but creatures: are them-
selves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose
to worship. They certainly grew under the same
shade in which learning flourished. They too may
decay with their natural protecting principles.
With you. for the present at least, they all threaten
to disappear together. Where trade and manu-
factures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of
nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies,
and not always ill supplies, their place ; but if com-
merce and the arts should be lost in an experiment
to try how well a state may stand without these
old fundamental principles, what sort of a thing
must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at
the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute
of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing
nothing at present, and hoping for nothing here-
after ?

I wish you may not be going fast, ami by the
shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation.
Already there appears a poverty of conception. ;:
coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings ot
the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their
liberty is not liberal. Their science i-- presump-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 10?

tuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and
brutal.

It is not clear, whether in England we learned
those grand and decorous principles and manners,
of which considerable traces yet remain, from you,
or whether you took them from us. But to you,
I think, we trace them best. You seem to me to
be — gentis incunabula nostra. France has always
more or less influenced manners in England : and
when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the
stream will not run long, or not run clear with us,
or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe,
in my opinion, but too close and connected a con-
cern in what is done in France. Excuse me, there-
fore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious
spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have
given too much scope to the reflections which have
arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important
of all revolutions, which may be dated from that
day — I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners,
and moral opinions. As things now stand, with
every thing respectable destroyed without us, and
an attempt to destroy within us every principle of
respect, one is almost forced to apologize for har-
bouring the common feelings of men.

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend
Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock who will
choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse ? —
For this plain reason — because it is natural I should;
because we are so made as to be affected at such
spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the
unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tre-
mendous uncertainty of human greatness; because

|US REFLI i riONS ON ilil

in those natural feelings we learn great lessons;
because in events like these our passions instruct \
our reason ; because when kings are hurled from
their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great
drama, and become the objects of insult to the base,
and of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in
the moral, as we should behold a miracle in the
physical order of things. We are alarmed into re-
flection ; our minds (as it has long since been
observed) are purified by terror and pity ; our weak,
unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations
of a mysterious wisdom. Some tears might be
drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited
on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding
in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted
distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life.
With such a perverted mind, I could never venture
to show my face at a tragedy. People would think
the tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons
not long since, have extorted from me, were the
tears of hypocrisy ; I should know them to be the
tears of folly.

Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral
sentiments than churches, where the feelings of
humanity are thus outraged. Poets, who have to
deal with an audience not yet graduated in the
school of the rights of men, and who must apply
themselves to the moral constitution of the heart,
would not dare to produce such a triumph
matter of exultation. There, where men follow their
natural impulses, they would not bear the odious
maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied
to the attainment of monarchical or democratic

REVOLUTION IN FRAN'I T. 109

tyranny. They would reject them on the modern,
as they once did on the ancient stage, where they
could not bear even the hypothetical proposition of
such wickedness in the mouth of a personated
tyrant, though suitable to the character he sustained.
No theatric audience in Athens would bear what
has been borne in the midst of the real tragedy of
this triumphal day ; a principal actor weighing, as
it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors — so much
actual crime against so much contingent advantage;
and after putting in and out weights, declaring
that the balance was on the side of the advantages.
They would not bear to see the crimes of a new
democracy posted as in a ledger against the crimes
of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics
finding democracy still in debt, but by no means
unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the
theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any ela-
borate process of reasoning, will show that this
method of political computation would justify every
extent of crime. They would see, that on these
principles, even where the very worst acts were not
perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of
the conspirators, than to their parsimony in the
expenditure of treachery and blood. They would
soon see, that criminal means once tolerated are
soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the
object than through the highway of the moral virtues.
Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit,
public benefit would soon become the pretext, and
perfidy and murder the end ; until rapacity, malice,
revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge, could
satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the

L

110 aEFLECTIONS ON THE

consequences of losing, in the splendour of those
triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of
wrong and right.

But the reverend pastor exults in this "leading in
triumph," because truly Louis the Sixteenth was "an
arbitrary monarch;" that is, in other words, neither
more nor less than because he was Louis the Six-
teenth, and because he had the misfortune to be born
king of France, with the prerogatives of which, a long-
line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of the
people, without any act of his, had put him in pos-
session. A misfortune it has indeed turned out to
him, that he was horn king of France. But un>-
fortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the
greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the
acts of whose whole reign were a series of conces-
sions to his subjects, who was willing to relax his
authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his
people to a share of freedom, not known, perhaps
not desired, by their ancestors ; such a prince,
though he should be subject to the common frailties
attached to men and to princes, though he should
have once thought it necessary to provide force
against the desperate designs manifestly carrying
on against his person, and the remnants of his
authority ; though all this should be taken into
consideration, I shall be led with great difficulty to
think he deserves the cruel and insulting triumph
of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause
of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble
for the cause of humanity, in the unpunished out-
rages of the most wicked of mankind. But there
are some people of that loWand degenerate fashion

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. Ill

of mind, that they look up with a sort of complacent
awe and admiration to kings, who know to keep
firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over their
subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the
awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard
against the very first approaches of freedom.
Against such as these they never elevate their
voice. Deserters from principle, listed with fortune,
they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor
any crime in prosperous usurpation.

If it could have been made clear to me, that the
king and queen of France (those I mean who were
such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel
tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme
for massacreing the National Assembly (I think
I have seen something like the latter insinuated in
certain publications,) I should think their captivity
just. If this be true, much more ought to have
been done — but done, in my opinion, in another
manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a noble
and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been
said to be consolatory to the human mind. But if
I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the
dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and
decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to
submit to a necessity, than to make a choice. Had
Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or
Charles the Ninth, been the subject ; if Charles the
Twelfth of Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or
his predecessor Christina, after the murder of
Monaldcschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or
into mine, I am sure our conduct would have been
different.

112 REFLECTIONS ON THE

If the French king, or king of the French, (or
by whatever name he is known in the new vocabu-
lary of your constitution,) has in his own person, and
that of his queen, really deserved these unavowed,
but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those sub-
sequent indignities more cruel than murder, such
a person would ill deserve even that subordinate
executory trust, which I understand is to be placed in
him ; nor is befit to be called chief in a nation which
he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for
such an office in a new^eommonwealth, than that of
a deposed tyrant, could not possibly be made. But
to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals.
and afterwards to trust him in your highest con-
cerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is
not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy,
nor safe in practice. Those who could make such
an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant
breach of trust than any they have yet committed
against the people. As this is the only crime in
which your leading politicians could have acted
inconsistently. 1 conclude that there is no sort of
ground for these horrid insinuations. 1 think no
better of all the other calumnies.

In England we give no credit to them. We are
generous enemies : we are. faithful allies. We
spurn from us with disgust and indignation the
slanders of those who bring us their anecdotes with
the attestation of the flower-de-luce on their shoul-
der. We have Lord George Gordon fast in
Newgate ; and neither bis being a public proselyte to
Judaism, nor his having, in his zeal against Catholic
priests and all sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 113

(excuse the term, it is still in use here) winch fulled
down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty,
of which he did not render himself worthy by a
virtuous use of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, and
tenanted the mansion. We have prisons almost as
strong as the Bastile, for those who dare to libel the
queens of France. In this spiritual retreat, let the
noble libeller remain. Let him there meditate on
his Thalmud, until he learns a conduct more be-
coming his birth and parts, and not so disgraceful
to the ancient religion to which he has become
a proselyte ; or until some persons from your
side of the water, to please your new Hebrew
brethren, shall ransom him. He may then be
enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the
synagogue, and a very small poundage, on the long
compound interest of the thirty pieces of silver,
(Dr. Price has shewn us what miracles compound
interest will perform in 1790 years,) the lands which
are lately discovered to have been usurped by the
Gallican church. Send us your popish Archbishop
of Paris, and we will send you our protestant
Rabbin. We shall treat the person you send us
in exchange like a gentleman and an honest man,
as he is ; but pray let him bring with him the fund
of his hospitality, bounty, and charity ; and, depend
upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that
honourable and pious fund, nor think of enriching
the treasury with the spoils of the poor-box.

To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the
honour of our nation to be somewhat concerned in
the disclaimer Of the proceedings of this society of
the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no

1.3

1 14 KI I Mi I IONS ON i III.

man's proxy. 1 speak only for myself, when
1 disclaim, as I do with all possible earnestness, all
communion with the actors in that triumph, or with
the admirers of it. When I assert any thing else,
as concerning the people of England, I speak from
observation, not from authority; but I speak from
the experience I have had in a pretty extensive and
mixed communication with the inhabitants of this
kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after
a course of attentive observation, begun early in
life, and continued for nearly forty years. I have
often been astonished, considering that we are
divided from you but by a slender dyke of about
twenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse
between the two countries has lately been very
great, to find how little you seem to know of us.
I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judg-
ment of this nation from certain publications, which
do, very erroneously, if they do at all, represent the
opinions and dispositions generally prevalent in
England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and
spirit of intrigue, of several petty cabals, who attempt
to hide their total want of consequence in bustle
and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each
other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous
neglect of their abilities is -a general mark of ac-
quiescence in their opinions. No such thing,
I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers
under a fern make the held ring with their impor-
tunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle.
reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak,
chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine
that those who make the noise arc the only ill-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 115

habitants of the field ; that of course they are many
in number; or that, after all, they are other than
the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud
and troublesome, insects of the hour.

I almost venture to affirm, that not one in a
hundred amongst us participates in the " triumph"
of the Revolution Society. If the king and queen
of France, and their children, were to fall into our
hands by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious
of all hostilities, (I deprecate such an event, I depre-
cate such hostility,) they would be treated with
another sort of triumphal entry into London. We
formerly have had a king of France in that situation;
you have read how he was treated by the victor in
the field ; and in what manner he was afterwards
received in England. Four hundred years have
gone over us ; but I believe we are not materially
changed since that period. Thanks to our sullen
resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold slug-
gishness of our national character, we still bear the
stamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I con-
ceive) lost the generosity and dignity of thinking
of the fourteenth century ; nor as yet have we
subtilized ourselves into savages. We are not the
converts of Rousseau ; we are not the disciples of
Voltaire ; Helvetius has made no progress amongst
us. Atheists are not our preachers ; madmen are
not our lawgivers. We know that we have made
no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries
are to be made, in morality ; nor many in the great
principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty,
which were understood long before we were born,
Utogether as well as they will be after the grave has

1 16 iu,i i E( riONS on i m

heaped its mould upon our presumption, and t lie
silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert
loquacity. In England we have not yet been com-
pletely embowelled of our natural entrails: we still
feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate those
inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians,
the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters
of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been
drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled,
like stuffed birds in a museum, with chart' and rags,
and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights
of num. We preserve the whole of our feelings still
native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and
infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood
beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up
with awe to kin«rs; with affection to parliaments;
with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests ;
and with respect to nobility.* Why? Because
when such ideas are brought before our minds, it
is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings
are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our
minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render
us unfit for rational liberty; and, by teaching us
a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to
be our low sport for a few holiday-, to make us

* The English are, 1 conceive, misrepresented in a Letter pub-
lished in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a di.-
minister. — When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at
Paris, he says, " The spirit of the people in this place has abolished
all the proud distinctions which the king and nobles had usurped in
their minds; whether they talk of the king,thi
their whole language is that <>f the most enlightened and liberal
amongst the English." If this gentleman means to confine the terms
enlightened and liber f men in] I maj be true

It is not generally sU.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 117

perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of slavery,
through the whole course of our lives.

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am
bold enough to confess, that we are generally men of
untaught feelings; that instead of casting away all
our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very con-
siderable degree, and, to take more shame to our-
selves, we cherish- them because they are prejudices;
and the longer they have lasted, and the more gene-
rally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them.
We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on
his own private stock of reason ; because we suspect
that this stock in each man is small, and that the
individuals would do better to avail themselves of
the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.
Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding
general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover
the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they
find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think
it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason
involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to
leave nothing but the naked reason; because preju-
dice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that
reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.
Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency;
it previously engages the mind in a steady course of
wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesi-
tating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled,
and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue
his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts.
Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of
his nature.

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do

118 REFLECTIONS ON THE

the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essen-
tially differ in these points. They have no respect
for the wisdom of others; hut they pay it off by
a very full measure of confidence in their own.
With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old
scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to
the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to
the duration of a building run up in haste; because
duration is no object to those who think little or
nothing has been done before their time, and who
place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive,
very systematically, that all things which give per-
petuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at
inexpiable war with all establishments. They think
that government may vary like modes of dress, and
with as little ill effect : that there needs no principle
of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency,
to any constitution of the state. They always speak
as if they were of opinion that there is a singular
species of compact between them and their magis-
trates, which binds the magistrate, but which has
nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the
people has a right to dissolve it without any reason,
but its will. Their attachment to their country itself
is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting
projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of
polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.

These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem pre-
valent with your new statesmen. But they are wholly
different from those on which we have always acted
in this country.

I hear it is sometimes given out in Fiance, that
what is doing among you is after the example of

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 119

England. I beg leave to affirm, that scarcely any
thing done with you has originated from the practice
or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in the
act or in the spirit of the proceeding. Let me add,
that we are as unwilling to learn these lessons from
France, as we are sure that we never taught them to
that nation. The cabals here, who take a sort of share
in your transactions, as yet consist of but a handful
of people. If unfortunately by their intrigues, their
sermons, their publications, and by a confidence de-
rived from an expected union with the counsels and
forces of the French nation, they should draw con-
siderable numbers into their faction, and in con-
sequence should seriously attempt any thing here in
imitation of what has been done with you, the event,
jl dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some
trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish
[their own destruction. This people refused to change
their law in remote ages, from respect to the infalli-'
bility of popes; and they will not now alter it from
a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers ;
though the former was armed with the anathema and
crusade, and though the latter should act with the
libel and the lamp-iron.

Formerly your affairs were your own concern only.
We felt for them as men; but we kept aloof from
them, because we were not citizens of France. But
when we see the model held up to ourselves, we
must feel as Englishmen, and feeling, we must pro-
vide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us,
are made part of our interest; so far at least as to
keep at a distance your panacea, or your plague.
|If it be a panacea, we do not want it. We know

120 ItEFLl > l LONS ON THE

the consequences of unnecessary physic. It' it bo
a plague, it is such a plague that the precautio
the most severe quarantine ought to be established
against it.

I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself phi-
losophic, receives the glory of many of the late pro-
ceedings; and that their opinions and systems are the
true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I have
heard of no party in England, literary or political, at
any time, known by such a description. It is not
with you composed of those men, is it, whom the
vulgar, in their blunt, homely style, commonly call
Atheists and Infidels? If it be, I admit that we too
have had writers of that description, who made some
noise in their day. At present they repose in lasting
oblivion. Who, born within the last forty years, has
read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal,
and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who
called themselves Freethinkers? Who now reads
Bolingbroke? "Who ever read him through? Ask
the booksellers of London what is become of all
these lights of the world. In as few years their few
successors will go to the family vault of "all the
Capulets." But whatever they were, or are, with us,
they were and are wholly unconnected individuals.
With us they kept the common nature of their kind,
and were not gregarious. They never acted in corps,
nor were known as a faction in the state, nor pre-
sumed to influence in that name or character, or for
the purposes of such a faction, on any of our public
concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so
be permitted to act, is another question. As such
cabals have not existed in England, so neither has

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 121

the spirit of them had any influence in establishing
the original frame of our constitution, or in any one
of the several reparations and improvements it has
undergone. The whole has been done under the
auspices, and is confirmed by the sanctions, of religion
and piety. The whole has emanated from the sim-
plicity of our national character, and from a sort of
native plainness and directness of understanding,
which for a long time characterized those men who
have successively obtained authority amongst us.
This disposition still remains, at least in the great
body of the people.

We know, and what is better we feel inwardly,
that religion is the basis of civil society, and the
source of all good and of all comfort.* In England
we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of
superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity
of the human mind might have crusted it over in the
course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the
people of England would not prefer to impiety. We
shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the
substance of any system to remove its corruptions,
to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction.
If our religious tenets should ever want a further
elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to explain
them. We shall not light up our temple from that
unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other
lights. It will be perfumed with other incense, than

* Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium
rerum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quae gerantur, eorum geri vi,
ditaone, acnuniine; cosdcinque uptime de genere huminum mereri ;
et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua
pietate colat religiones intucri; piorum et impiorum habere rationem
His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et
a vera sententia. — Cic. dc Legibus, 1. 2.

M

\:>2 HBTLECTIONS ON I HE

the infectious stuff which is imported by the smug-
glers of adulterated metaphj sics. It our ecclesiastical
establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice

or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ
for the audit, or receipt, or application of its con-
secrated revenue. Violently condemning neither the
Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heat.- are sub-
sided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the
Protestant: not because we think, it has le-s of the

Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment,

it has more. We are protectants, not from indifference,
but from zeal.

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man i-
by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism
is against, not only our reason, but our instincts j
and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the mo-
ment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot
spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in
France is now so furiously boiling, we should uncover
our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion
which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and
one great source of civilization amongst us, and
among many other nations, we are apprehensive
(being well aware that the mind will not endure a
void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading
superstition might take place of it.

For that reason, before we take from our establish-
ment the natural human means of estimation, and give
it up to contempt, as you have done, and in doing it
have incurred the penalties you well deserve to suffer,
we desire that some other may be presented to us in
the place of it. We shall then form our judgment.

On those idea-, instead of quai relling with establish-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 123

inents, as some do, who have made a philosophy and
a religion of their hostility to such institutions, we
cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep an
established church, an established monarchy, an esta-
blished aristocracy, and an established democracy,
each in the degree it exists, and in no greater. I
shall shew you presently how much of each of these
we possess.

It has been the misfortune- (not as these gentlemen
think it, the glory) of this age, that every thing is to
be discussed, as if the constitution of our country
were to be always a subject rather of altercation than
enjoyment. For this reason, as well as for the satis-
faction of those among you (if any such you have
among you) who may wish to profit of examples,
I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon
each of these establishments. I do not think they
were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they
wished to new-model their laws, set commissioners
to examine the best constituted republics within their
reach.

First, I beg leave to speak of our church establish-
ment, which is the first of our prejudices, not a pre-
judice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound
and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It is first,
and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground
on that religious system, of which we are now in
possession, we continue to act on the early received
and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That
sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up
the august fabric of states, but like a provident pro-
prietor, to preserve the structure from profanation
and ruin, as a sacred temple purged from all the

124 REFLECTION'S ON THE

impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice, and
tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated
the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This
consecration is made, that all who administer in the
government of men, in which they stand in the
person of God himself, should have high and worthy
notions of their function and destination ; that their
hope should he full of immortality; that they should
not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the
temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but to
a solid, permanent existence in the permanent part
of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory
in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to
the world.

Such sublime principles ought to be infused into
persons of exalted situations; and religious establish-
ments provided, that may continually revive and
enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of
civil, every sort of politic institution, aiding the
rational and natural ties that connect the human un-
derstanding and affections to the divine, are not more
than necessary in order to build up that wonderful
structure, Man ; whose prerogative it is, to be in a great
degree a creature of his own making; and who, when
made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no
trivial place in the creation. But whenever man is
put over men, as the better nature ought ever to
preside, in that case more particularly he should as
nearly as possible be approximated to his perfection.

The consecration of the state, by a state religious
establishment, is necessary also to operate with a
wholesome awe upon free citizens ; because, in order
to secure their freedom, they must enjoy some <le-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 125

terminate portion of power. To them therefore
a religion connected with the state, and with their
duty towards it, becomes even more necessary than
in such societies, where the people, by the terms of
their subjection, are confined to private sentiment.-,
and the management of their own family concerns.
All persons possessing any portion of power ought
to be strongly and awfully 'impressed with an idea
that they act in trust; and that they are to account
for their conduct in that trust to the one great
Master, Author, and Founder of society.

This principle ought even to be more strongly
impressed upon the minds of those who compose
the collective sovereignty, than upon those of single
princes. Without instruments, these princes can do
nothing. Whoever uses instruments, in finding
helps, finds also impediments. Their power is there-
fore by no means complete ; nor are they safe in
extreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by
flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible
that, whether covered or not by positive law, in
some way or other they are accountable even here
for the abuse of their trust. If they are not cut off
by a rebellion of their people, they may be strangled
by the very Janissaries kept for their security against
all other rebellion. Thus we have seen the king of
France sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay.
But where popular authority is absolute and un-
restrained, the people have an infinitely greater,
because a far better founded confidence in their own
power. They are themselves, in a great measure,
their own instruments. They are nearer to their
objects. Besides, they arc less under responsibility

m3

126 REFLECTIONS ON Till

to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth,
the sense of fame and estimation. The share of
infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each in-
dividual in public acts, is small indeed; the operation
of opinion heing in the inverse ratio to the number
of those who abuse power. Their own approbation
of their own acts has to them the appearance of
a public judgment in their favour. A perfect demo-
cracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the
world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most
fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he
can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the
people at large never ought: for as all punishments
are for example towards the conservation of the
people at large, the people at large can never become
the subject of punishment by any human hand.* It
is therefore of infinite importance that they should
not be suffered to imagine that their will, any more
than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong.
They ought to be persuaded that they are full as
little entitled, and far less qualified, with safety to
themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever;
that therefore they are not, under a false shew of
liberty, but in truth, to exercise an unnatural, in-
verted domination, tyrannically to exact from those
who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to
their interest, which is their right, but an abject
submission to their occasional will; extinguishing
thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral prin-
ciple, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all
consistency of character; whilst by the very same

• Quicquid multis peccatur inultum.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 127

process they give themselves up a proper, a suitahle,
but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambition
of popular sycophants or courtly flatterers.

When the people have emptied themselves of all
the lust of selfish will, (which without religion it is
utterly impossible they ever should) ; when they are
conscious that they exercise, and exercise perhaps in
a higher link of the order of delegation, the power,
which to be legitimate must be according to that
eternal immutable law, in which will and reason are
the same, they will be more careful how they place
power in base and incapable hands. In their nomi-
nation to office, they will not appoint to the exercise
of authority, as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy
function; not according to their sordid, selfish in-
terest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbi-
trary will; but they will confer that power (which
any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on
those only in whom they may discern that pre-
dominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom,
taken together and fitted to the charge, such as in
the great and inevitable mixed mass of human im-
perfections and infirmities is to be found.

When they are habitually convinced that no evil
can be acceptable, either in the act or the permission,
to him whose essence is good, they will be better
able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates,
civil, ecclesiastical, or military, any thing that bears
the least resemblance to a proud and lawless domi-
nation.

Hut one of the first and most leading principles on
which the commonwealth and the laws are con-
secrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-

128 REFLECTIONS ON I ill

renters in it. unmindful of what they have received

from their ancestors, or of what is due to their pos-
terity, should act as if they were the entire masters;
that they should not think it amongst their rights to
cut off the entail, or conunit waste on the inheritance,
by destroying at their pleasure the whole original
fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those
who come after them a ruin instead of a habitation
— and teaching these successors as little to respect
their contrivances, as they had themselves respected
the institutions of their forefathers. By this un-
principled facility of changing the state as often, and
as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating
fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity
of the commonwealth would be broken. No one
generation could link with the other". Men would
become little better than the flies of a summer.

And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the
pride of the human intellect, which, with all its
defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected
reason of ages, combining the principles of original
justice with the infinite variety of human concern-.,
as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer
studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the
certain attendants upon all those who have never
experienced a wisdom greater than their own) would
usurp the tribunal. Of course, no certain laws,
establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear,
would keep the actions of men in a certain course,
or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in
the modes of holding property, or exercising func-
tion, could form a solid ground on which any parent
could speculate in the education of his offspring, or

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 129

in a choice for their future establishment in the
world. No principles would be early worked into
the habits. As soon as the most able instructor had
completed his laborious course of institution, instead
of sending forth his pupil accomplished in a virtuous
discipline, fitted to procure him attention and re-
spect in his place in society, he would find every
thing altered; and that he had turned out a poor
creature to the contempt and derision of the world,
ignorant of the true grounds of estimation. Who
would ensure a tender and delicate sense of honour
to beat almost with the first pulses of the heart,
when no man could know what would be the test of
honour in a nation continually varying the standard
of its coin? No part of life would retain its ac-
quisitions. Barbarism with regard to science and
literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts and
manufactures, would infallibly succeed to the want
of a steady education and settled principle; and thus
the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations,
crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and
powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to
all the winds of heaven.

To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and
versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of
obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have con-
secrated the state, that no man should approach to look
into its defects or corruptions but with due caution ;
that he should never dream of beginning its refor-
mation by its subversion; that he should approach
to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father,
with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this
wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on

130 REFLECTIONS ON THE

those children of their country who are prompt
rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put
him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that, by
their poisonous weeds and wild incantations, they
may regenerate the paternal constitution, and reno-
vate their father "s life.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts
for objects of mere occasional interest may be dis-
solved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be
considered as nothing better than a partnership
agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or
tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be
taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be
dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be
looked on with other reverence; because it is not
a partnership in things subservient only to the gross
animal existence of a temporary and perishable
nature. It is a partnership in all science — a part-
nership in all art — a partnership in every virtue, and
in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership
cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes
a partnership not only between those who are living.
but between those who are living, those who are
dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract
of each particular state is but a clause in the great
primeval contract of eternal society, linking the
lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible
and invisible world, according to a fixed compact
sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all
physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed
place. This law is not subject to the will of those
who, by an obligation above them, and infinitely
superior, are bound to submit their will to that law.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 131

The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom
are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on
their speculations of a contingent improvement,
wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of
their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into
an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary
principles. It is the tirst and- supreme necessity
only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses,
a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits
no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone
can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no
exception to the rule; because this necessity itself
is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of
things, to which man must be obedient by consent or
force: but if that which is only submission to ne-
cessity should be made the object of choice, the law
is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are
outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of
reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful
penitence, into the antagonist world of madness,
discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.

These, my dear Sir, are, were, and I think long
will be, the sentiments of not the least learned and
reflecting part of this kingdom. They who are
included in this description, form their opinions on
such grounds as such persons ought to form them.
The less inquiring receive them from an authority
which those whom Providence dooms to live on trust
need not be ashamed to rely on. These two sorts
of men move in the same direction, though in a
different place. They both move with the order of
the universe. They all know or feel this great
ancient truth: " Quod illi principi et praepotenti Deo

132 REFLECTIONS ON THE

qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum qua>
quidem riant in terris acceptius quam concilia et
csetus hominurn jure sociati qua.' civitates appel-
lantur." They take this tenet of the head and heart,
not from the great name which it immediately hears,
nor from the greater from whence it is derived; but
from that which alone can give true weight and
sanction to any learned opinion, the common nature
and common relation of men. Persuaded that all
things ought to he done with reference, anil referring
all to the point of reference to which all should be
directed, they think themselves bound, not only as
individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or as con-
gregated in that personal capacity, to renew the
memory of their high origin and cast; but also in
their corporate character to perform their national
homage to the Institutor, and Author, and Protector
of civil society; without which civil society man
could not by any possibility arrive at the perfect ion
of which his nature is capable, nor even make a
remote and faint approach to it. They conceive
that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our
virtue, willed also the necessary means of its per-
fection.— He willed therefore the state — He willed it-
connexion with the source and original archetype of
all perfection. They who are convinced of this his
will, which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of
sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this
our corporate fealty and homage, that this our recog-
nition of a signiory paramount, I had almost said
this oblation of the state itself, as a worthy offering
on the high altar of universal praise, should be per-
formed as all public solemn acts are performed, in

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 133

buildings, in music, in decoration, in speech, in the
dignity of persons, according to the customs of man-
kind, taught by their nature; that is, with modest
splendour and unassuming state, with mild majesty
and sober pomp. For those purposes they think
some part of the wealth of the country is as usefully
employed as it can be, in fomenting the luxury of
individuals. It is the public ornament. It is the
public consolation. It nourishes the public hope.
The poorest man finds his own importance and
dignity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of indi-
viduals at every moment makes the man of humble
rank and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and
degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the
man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to
put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of
opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature,
and may be more than equal by virtue, that this
portion of the general wealth of his country is em-
ployed and sanctified.

I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give
you opinions which have been accepted amongst us,
from very early times to this moment, with a con-
tinued and general approbation, and which indeed
are so worked into my mind, that I am unable to
distinguish what I have learned from others from
the results of my own meditation.

It is on some such principles that the majority of
the people of England, far from thinking a religious
national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful
to be without one. In France you are wholly mis-
taken if you do not believe us above all other things
attached to it. and beyond all other nations; and

N

1 :'.4 - o\ i 1:1

when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably
in its favour, (as in some instances they have (lone
most certainly, in their very errors you will at least
discover their zeal.

This principle runs through the whole system of
their polity. They do not consider their church
establishment as convenient, but as essentia] to their
state; not as a thing heterogeneous and separable;
something added for accommodation; what they may
either keep up or lay aside, according to their tem-
porary ideas of convenience. They consider it as
the foundation of their whole constitution, with
which, and with every part of which, it holds an
indissoluble union. Church and state are ideas in-
separable in their minds, and scarcely is the one
ever mentioned without mentioning the other.

Our education is so formed as to confirm and
fix this impression. Our education is in a man-
ner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and in all
stages from infancy to manhood. Even when our
youth, leaving schools and universities, enter that
most important period of life which begins to link
experience and study together, and when with that
view they visit other countries, instead of old do-
mestics whom we have seen as governors to principal
men from other parts, three-fourths of those who
go abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen
are ecclesiastics; not as austere masters, nor as
mere followers; but as friends and companions of
a graver character, and not seldom persons as well
horn as themselves. With them, as relations, they
most commonly keep up a close connexion through
life. By this connexion we conceive that we attach

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 135

our gentlemen to the church; and we liberalize the
church by an intercourse with the leading characters
of the country.

So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes
and fashions of institution, that very little alteration
has been made in them since the fourteenth or
fifteenth century ; adhering in -this particular, as
in all things els"e, to our old settled maxim, never
entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We
found these old institutions, on the whole, favourable
to morality and discipline ; and we thought they
were susceptible of amendment, without altering
the ground. We thought that they were capable
of receiving and meliorating, and above all of pre-
serving, the accessions of science and literature, as
the order of Providence should successively produce
them. And after all, with this Gothic and monkish
education (for such it is in the ground- work) we
may put in our claim to as ample and as early
a share in all the improvements in science, in arts,
and in literature, which have illuminated and adorned
the modern world, as any other nation in Europe :
we think one main cause of this improvement was
our not despising the patrimony of knowledge which
was left us by our forefathers.

It is from our attachment to a church establish-
ment, that the English nation did not think it wise to
entrust that great fundamental interest of the whole
to what they trust no part of their civil or military
public service, that is, to the unsteady and precarious
contribution of individuals. They go further. They
certainly never have suffered, and never will suffer,
the fixed estate of the church to be converted into

136 REFLECTIONS ON THE

a pension, to depend on the treasury, and to be

delayed, withheld, or perhaps to be extinguished, by
fiscal difficulties ; which difficulties may sometimes
be pretended for political purposes, and are in fact
often brought on by the extravagance, negligence,
and rapacity of politicians. The people of England
think that they have constitutional motive-, as well
as religious, against any project of turning their inde-
pendent clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state.
They tremble for their liberty, from the influence of
a clergy dependent on .the crown; they tremble
for the public tranquillity from the disorders of
a factious clergy, if it were made to depend upon
any other than the crown. They therefore made
their church, like their king and their nobility,
independent.

From the united considerations of religion and
constitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty
to make a sure provision for the consolation of the
feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they
have incorporated and identified the estate of the
church with the mass of private property, of which
the state is not the proprietor, either for use or
dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator,
have ordained that the provision of this esta-
blishment might be as stable as. the earth on which
it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus
of funds and actions.

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light

and leading in England, whose wisdom | if they

any) is open and direct, would be ashamed,

as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion

in name, which by their proceedings they appear to

REVOLUTION IN FBANCE. 13"

contemn. If by their conduct (the only language
that rarely lies) they seemed to regard the great
ruling principle of the moral and the natural world.
as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience,
they apprehend that by such a conduct they would
defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They
would find it difficult to make- others believe in
a system to which they manifestly gave no credit
themselves. The christian statesmen of this land
would indeed first provide for the multitude, because
it is the multitude ; and is therefore, as such, the
first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in
all institutions. They have been taught, that the
circumstance of the gospel's being preached to the
poor, was one of the great tests of its true mission.
They think, therefore, that those do not believe it,
who do not take care it should he preached to the
poor. But as they know that charity is not confined
to any one description, but ought to apply itself to
all men who have wants, they are not deprived of
a due and anxious sensation of pity to the distresses
of the miserable great. They are not repelled
through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their
arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal at-
tention to their mental blotches and running sores.
They are sensible that religious instruction is of
more consequence to them than to any others ;
from the greatness of the temptation to which they
are exposed ; from the important consequences that
attend their faults ; from the contagion of their ill
example ; from the necessity of bowing down the
Stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the
yoke of moderation and virtue; from a consideration

138 REFLECTIONS ON THE

of the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning
what imports men most to know, which prevails at
courts, and at the head of armies, and in senates, as
much as at the loom and in the field.

The English people are satisfied, that to the greai
the consolations of religion arc as necessary as its
instructions. They too arc among the unhappy.
They feel personal pain and domestic sorrow. In
these thej have no privilege, but arc subject to
pay their full contingent to the contributions Levied
on mortality. They want this sovereign balm under
their gnawing cares and anxieties, which, being less
conversant about the limited wants of animal life,
range without limit, and are diversified by infinite
combinations in the wild and unbounded regions of
imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to
these, our often very unhapp) brethren, to fill the
gloom} void that reigns in minds which have nothing
on eartli to hope or fear; something to relieve in
the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of
those who have nothing to do ; something to excite
an appetite to existence in the palled satiety winch
attcnd> on all pleasures which may be bought,
where nature is not left to her own process, where
even desire is anticipated, and therefore fruition
defeated, by meditated schemes and contrivances of
delight; and no interval, no obstacle, is interposed
between the wish and the accomplishment.

The people of England know how little influence
the teachers of religion are likely to have with the
wealthy and powerful of long standing, and how

much Less with the newly fortunate, if they appear
in a manner no wa\ assorted to those with whom

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 139

they must associate, and over whom they must even
exercise, in some cases, something like an authority.
What must they think of that body of teachers, if
they see it in no part above the establishment of
their domestic servants? If the poverty were volun-
tary, there might be some difference. Strong in-
stances of self-denial operate powerfully on our
minds ; and a man who has no wants has obtained
great freedom and firmness, and even dignity. But
as the mass of any description of men are but men,
and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that dis-
respect which attends upon all lay poverty will
not depart from the ecclesiastical. Our provident
constitution has therefore taken care that those who
are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, those who
are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither
incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms ;
nor will it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true
medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilst.
we provide first for the poor, and with a parental
solicitude, we have not relegated religion (like
something we were ashamed to shew) to obscure
municipalities or rustic villages. No ! We will
have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and
parliaments. We will have her mixed throughout
the whole mass of life, and blended with all the
classes of society. The people, of England will
shew to the haughty potentates of the world, and
to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous,
an informed nation, honours the high magistrates
of its church ; that it will not suffer the insolence
of wealth and titles, or any other species of proud
pretension, to look down with scorn upon what they

140 Ri;i LE( riONS ON i UL

Look up to with reverence; nor presume to trample
on that acquired personal nobility, which thej intend

always to be, and which often is the fruit, not the
reward, (for what can be the reward?) of learning,
piety, and virtue. They can sec, without pain or
grudging, an archbishop precede a duke. They
can see a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Win-
chester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a-
year, and cannot conceive why it is in worse
hands than estates to the like amount in the hands
of this earl, or that squire; although it may be
true, that so many dogs and horses are not kept by
the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to
nourish the children of the people. It is true, the
whole church revenue is not always employed, and
to every shilling, in charity — nor perhaps ought it ;
but something is generally so employed. It is
better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving
much to free will, even with some loss to the object.
than to attempt to make men mere machines and
instruments of a political benevolence. The world
on t ho whole will gain by a liberty, without which
virtue cannol exist.

When once the commonwealth has established
the estates of the church as property, it can, con-
sistently, hear nothing of the more or the less.
Too much and too little are treason against property.
What evil can arise from the quantity in any hand,
whilst the supreme authority has the full, sovereign
superintendence over this, as over any property, to
prevent every species of abuse ; and, whenever if
notably deviates, to give to it a direction agreeable
to the purposes of it- Institution ?

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 141

In England most of us conceive that it is envy
and malignity towards those who are often the be-
ginners of their own fortune, and not a love of the
self-denial and mortification of the ancient church,
that makes some look askance at the distinctions,
and honours, and revenues, which, taken from no
person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the
people of England are distinguishing. They hear
these men speak broad. Their tongue betrays
them. Their language is in the patois of fraud;
in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people
of England must think so, when these praters affect
to carry back the clergy to that primitive evangelic
poverty, which, in the spirit, ought always to exist
in them, (and in us too, however we may like it,)
but in the thing must be varied, when the relation
of that body to the state is altered; when manners,
when modes of life, when indeed the whole order
of human affairs has undergone a total revolution.
We shall believe those reformers then to be honest
enthusiasts — not, as now we think them, cheats and
deceivers — when we see them throwing their own
goods into common, and submitting their own per-
sons to the austere discipline of the early church.

With these ideas rooted in their minds, the com-
mons of Great Britain, in the national emergencies,
will never seek their resource from the confiscation
of the estates of the church and poor. Sacrilege
and proscription are not among the ways and means
of our committee of supply. The Jews in Change
Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopes of
a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of
Canterbury. I am not afraid that I shall be dis-

1 4 J REFLECTIONS ON 1 ill

avowed, when I assure you that there is not our
public man in tins kingdom, whom you would wish
to quote; no not one, of any party or description,
who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious,
and cruel confiscation which the National Assemblj
has been compelled to make of that property, which
it was their first duty to protect.

It is with the exultation of a little national pride 1
iell you, that those amongst us who have wished to
pledge the societies of Paris in the cup of their
abominations, have been disappointed. The robbery
of your church has proved a security to the posses-
sions of ours. It has roused the people. They
see with horror and alarm that enormous and shame-
less act of proscription. It has opened, and will
more and more open, their eyes upon the selfish
enlargement of mind, and the narrow liberality of
sentiment of insidious men, which, commencing in
close hypocrisy and fraud, have ended in open
violence and rapine. At home we behold similar
beginnings. We are on our guard against similar
conclusions.

I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense
of the duties imposed upon us by the law of social
union, as, upon any pretext of public service, to
confiscate the goods of a single unoffending citizen.
Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of every thing
which can vitiate and degrade human nature) could
think of seizing on the property of men. unaccused,
unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds
and thousands together? Who, that had not losl
every trace of humanity, could think of casting down
men of exalted rank and sacred function, some .i

REVOLUTION IN FRAME. 1 4 .">

them of an age to call at once for reverence and
compassion, of casting them down from the highest
situation in the commonwealth, wherein they were
maintained by their own landed property, to a state
of indigence, depression, and contempt ?

The confiscators truly have made some allowance
to their victims from the scraps and fragments of
their own tables, from which they have been so
harshly driven, and which have been so bounti-
fully spread for a feast to the harpies of usury.
But to drive men from independence to live on alms,
is itself great cruelty. That which might be a
tolerable condition to men in one state of life, and
not habituated to other things, may, when all these
circumstances are altered, be a dreadful revolution ;
and one to which a virtuous mind would feel pain
in condemning any guilt, except that which would
demand the life of the offender. But to many minds
this punishment of degradation and infamy is worse
than death. Undoubtedly it is an infinite aggrava-
tion of this cruel suffering, that the persons who
were taught a double prejudice in favour of religion,
by education, and by the place they held in the
administration of its functions, are to receive the
remnants of their property as alms from the profane
and impious hands of those who had plundered
them of all the rest ; to receive, (if they are at
all to receive) not from the charitable contributions
of the faithful, but from the insolent tenderness of
known and avowed atheism, the maintenance of
religion, measured out to them on the standard of
the contempt in which it is held ; and for the pur-

144 BE] III Tin- S ON nil

pose of rendering those who receive the allowance

vile and of no estimation in the eyes of mankind.

But tliis act of seizure of property, it seems, is a
judgment in law, and not a confiscation. They have,
it seems, found out in the academies of the Palais
Royal, and the Jacobins, that certain men had no
right to the possessions which they held under law.
usage, the decisions of courts, and the accumulated
prescription of a thousand years. They say that
ecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures of the
state, whom at pleasure they may destroy, and of
course limit and modify in every particular ; that the
goods they possess are not properly theirs, but
belong to the state which created the- fiction ; ami
we are therefore not to trouble ourselves with what
they may suffer in their natural feelings and natural
persons, on account of what is done towards them
in this their constructive character. Of what import
is it, under what names you injure men, and
deprive them of the just emoluments of a profession,
in which they were not only permitted but en-
couraged by the state to engage; and upon the
supposed certainty of which emoluments they had
formed the plan of their lives, contracted debts, and
led multitudes to an entire dependence upon them '.-

You do not imagine, Sir, that I am going to com-
pliment this miserable distinction of persons with
any long discussion. The arguments of tyranny
are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had
not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained
a power which secures indemnity to all the crimes
of which they have since been guilty, or that they

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. L-45

can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician,
but the lash of the executioner, that would have
refuted a sophistry which becomes an accomplice of
theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants of Paris
are loud in their declamations against the departed
regal tyrants who in former ages have vexed the
world. They are thus bold, because they are safe
from the dungeons and iron cages of their old
masters. Shall we be more tender of the tyrants of
our own time, when we see them acting worse
tragedies under our eyes? shall we not use the
same liberty that they do, when we can use it with
the same safety? when to speak honest truth only
requires a contempt of the opinions of those whose
actions we abhor ?

This outrage on all the rights of property was at
first covered with what, on the system of their con-
duct, was the most astonishing of all pretexts — a
regard to national faith. The enemies to property
at first pretended a most tender, delicate, and scru-
pulous anxiety for keeping the king's engagements
with the public creditor. These professors of the
rights of men are so busy in teaching others, that
they have not leisure to learn any thing themselves ;
otherwise they would have known that it is to the
property of the citizen, and not to the demands of
the creditor of the state, that the first and original
faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the
citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior
in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether
possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue
of a participation in the goods of some community,
were no part of the creditor's security, expressed 01

146 REFLECTIONS ON THE

implied. They never so much as entered into his
head when he made his bargain. He well knew that
the public, whether represented by a monarch or
by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate;
and it can have no public estate, except in what it
derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon
the citizens at large. This was engaged, and nothing
else could be engaged, to the public creditor. No man
can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
It is impossible to avoid some observation on the
contradictions caused by the extreme rigour and the
extreme laxity of this new public faith, which in-
fluenced in this transaction, and which influenced
not according to the nature of the obligation, but to
the description of the persons to whom it was
engaged. No acts of the old government of the
kings of France are held valid in the National
Assembly, except its pecuniary engagements ; arts
of all others of the most ambiguous legality. The
rest of the acts of that royal government are con-
sidered in so odious a light, that to have a claim
under its authority is looked on as a sort of crime.
A pension, given as a reward for service to the state,
is surely as good a ground of property as any
security for money advanced to the state. It is a
better ; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain
that service. We have however seen multitudes of
people under this description in France, who never
had been deprived of their allowances by the most
arbitrary ministers, in the most arbitrary times, by
this assembly of the rights of men, robbed without
mercy. They were told, in answer to their claim
to the bread earned with their blood, that their

REVOLUTION IN FRAM E. 147

services had not been rendered to the country that
now exists.

This laxity of public faith is not confined to
those unfortunate persons. The Assembly, with
perfect consistency it must be owned, is engaged in
a respectable deliberation how far it is bound by the
treaties made with other nations under the former
government, and their committee is to report which
of them they ought to ratify, and which not. By
this means they have put the external fidelity of this
virgin state on a par with its internal.

•It is not easy to conceive upon what rational
principle the royal government should not, of the
two, rather have possessed the power of rewarding
service, and making treaties, in virtue of its preroga-
tive, than that of pledging to creditors the revenue
of the state actual and possible. The treasure of
the nation, of all things, has been the least allowed
to the prerogative of the king of France, or to the
prerogative of any king in Europe. To mortgage
the public revenue implies the sovereign dominion,
in the fullest sense, over the public purse. It goes
far beyond the trust even of a temporary and occa-
sional taxation. The acts however of that dangerous
power (the distinctive mark of a boundless despotism)
have been alone held sacred. Whence arose this
preference given by a democratic assembly to a
body of property deriving its title from the most
critical and obnoxious of all the exertions of monar-
chical authority ? Reason can furnish nothing to
reconcile inconsistency ; nor can partial favour be
accounted for upon equitable principles. But the
contradiction and partiality which admit no justifica-

L48 aEFLECTIONS ON Mil

tion, are not the less without an adequate cause;
and that cause I do not think it difficult to discover.

By the vast debt of France a great monied
interest had insensibly grown up, and with it a great
power. By the ancient usages which prevailed in
that kingdom, the general circulation of property,
and in particular the mutual convertibility of land
into money, and of money into land, had always
been a matter of difficulty. Family settlements,
rather more general and more strict than they are in
England, the Jus reiraetus, the great mass of landed
property held by the crown, and by a maxim of the
Trench law held unalienably, the vast estates of the
ecclesiastic corporations, — all these had kept the
landed and monied interests more separated in
France, less miscible, and the owners of the two
distinct species of property not so well disposed to
eacb other as they are in this countn .

The monied property was long looked on with
rather an evil eye by the people. They saw it
connected with their distresses, and aggravating
them. It was no less envied by the old landed
interests, partly for the same reasons that rendered
it obnoxious to the people, but much more so as it
eclipsed, by the splendour of an ostentatious luxury,
the unendowed pedigrees and naked titles of several
among the nobility. Even when the nobility, which
represented the more permanent landed interest,
united themselves by marriage (which sometimes
was the case) with the other description, the wealth
which saved the family from ruin, was supposed to
contaminate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and
heart-burnings of these parties were increased even

REVOLUTION IN FRANci:. 140

by tlie usual means by which discord is made to
cease, and quarrels are turned into friendship. In
the mean time, the pride of the wealthy men, not
noble or newly noble, increased with its cause.
They felt with resentment an inferiority, the
grounds of which they did not acknowledge. There
was no measure to which they were not willing to
lend themselves, in order to be revenged of the
outrages of this rival pride, and to exalt their wealth
to what they considered as its natural rank and esti-
mation. They struck at the nobility through the
crown and the church. They attacked them par-
ticularly on the side on which they thought them
the most vulnerable, that is, the possessions of the
church, which, through the patronage of the crown,
generally devolved upon the nobility. The bishop-
ricks, and the great commendatory abbies, were, with
few exceptions, held by that order.

In this state of real, though not always perceived
warfare between the noble ancient landed interest,
and the new monied interest, the greatest because
the most applicable strength was in the hands of
the latter. The monied interest is .in its nature
more ready for any adventure ; and its possessors
more disposed to new enterprises of any kind.
Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more
naturally with any novelties. It is therefore the
kind of wealth which will be resorted to by all
who wish for change.

Along with the monied interest, a new description
of men had grown up, with whom that interest soon
formed a close and marked union — I mean the
political men of letters. Men of letters, fond

o 3

150 BJ .1 i.i ( riONS on THE

of distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to
innovation. Since the decline of the life and
greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not
so much cultivated either by him, or by the regent,
or the successors to the crown ; nor were they
<'d to the court by favours and emoluments
so systematically as during the splendid period of
that ostentatious and not impolitic reign. What they
lost iii the old court protection, they endeavoured to
make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of their
own; to which the two academies of France, and
afterwards the vast undertaking of the Encyclopaedia,
carried on by a society of these gentlemen, did not
a little contribute.

The literary cabal had some years ago formed
something like a regular plan for the destruction
of the Christian religion. This object they pursued
with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been
discovered only in the propagators of some system
of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of
proselytism in the most fanatical degree ; and from
thence, by an easy progress, with the spirit of
persecution according to their means. What was
not to be done towards their great end by any
; or immediate act. might be wrought by a
longer process through the medium of opinion.
To command that opinion, the first step is to
establish a dominion over those who direct it.
They contrived to possess themselves, with great
method and perseverance, of all the avenue- to
literary fame. Many of them indeed stood high
in I lie ranks of literature and science. The world
had done them justice; and in favour of general

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 151

talents forgave the evil tendency of their peculiar
principles. This was true liberality ; which they
returned by endeavouring to confine the reputation
of sense, learning, and taste, to themselves or their
followers. I will venture to say that this narrow,
exclusive spirit has not been less prejudicial to
literature and to taste, than to morals and true
philosophy. These atheistical fathers have a bigo-
try of their own ; and they have learnt to talk
against monks with the spirit of a monk. But in
some things they are men of the world. The
resources of intrigue are called in to supply the
defects of argument and wit. To this system of
literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry
to blacken and discredit in every way, and by every
means, all those who did not hold to their faction.
To those who have observed the spirit of their
conduct, it has long been clear that nothing was
wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance
of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution
which would strike at property, liberty, and life.

The desultory and faint persecution carried on
against them, more from compliance . with form
and decency than with serious resentment, neither
weakened their strength, nor relaxed their efforts.
The issue of the whole was, that, what with op-
position, and what with success, a violent and
malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in
the world, had taken an entire possession of their
minds, and rendered their whole conversation,
which otherwise would have been pleasing and
instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal,
intrigue, and proselytism, prevaded all their thoughts,

1.52 REFLECTIONS on THE

words, and actions. And as controversial zeal soon
turns its thoughts on force, they began t<> insinuate
themselves into a correspondence with foreign
princes; in hopes, through their authority, which
at first they flattered, they might bring about the
changes they had in view. To them it was indifferent
whether these changes were to be accomplished by
the thunderbolt of despotism, or by the earthquake
of popular commotion. The correspondence between

this cabal and the late king of Prussia will throw
no small light upon the spirit of all their proceedings.
For the same purpose for which they intrigued with
princes, they cultivated, in a distinguished manner.
the monied interest of Prance; ami. partly through
the means furnished by those whose peculiar officer
gave them the most extensive and certain means
of communication, they carefully occupied all the
avenues to opinion.

Writers, especially when they act in a body, and
with one direction, have great influence on the public
mind ; the alliance therefore of these writers with
the monied interest had no small effect in removing
the popular odium and envy which attended that
species of wealth. These writers, like the propa-
gators of all novelties, pretended to ;i great zeal
for the poor and the lower^orders. whilst in their
satires they rendered hateful, by every exaggeration,
the faults of courts, of nobility, and of priesthood.
They became a sort of demagogues. They served
as a link to unite, in favour of one object, obnoxious
wealth to restless and desperate poverty.

As these two kinds of men appear principal
Leaders in all the late transactions, their junction

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 153

and politics will serve to account, not upon any
principles of law or of policy, but as a cause, for
the general fury with which all the landed property
of ecclesiastical corporations has been attacked ; and
the great care which, contrary to their pretended
principles, has been taken of a monied interest
originating from the authority of the crown. All
the envy against wealth and power was artificially
directed against other descriptions of riches. On
what other principle than that which I have stated
can we account for an appearance so extraordinary
and. unnatural as that of the ecclesiastical possessions,
which had stood so many successions of ages and
shocks of civil violences, and were guarded at once
by justice and by prejudice, being applied to the
payment of debts comparatively recent, invidious,
and contracted by a decried and subverted govern-
ment ?

Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the
public debts? Assume that it was not, and that
a loss must be incurred somewhere — When the only
estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting
parties had in contemplation at the time in which
their bargain was made, happens to fail, who, ac-
cording to the principles of natural and legal equity,
ought to be the sufferer ? Certainly it ought to be
either the party who trusted, or the party who
persuaded him to trust ; or both ; and not third
parties who had no concern with the transaction.
Upon any insolvency they ought to suffer who were
weak enough to lend upon bad security, or they who
fraudulently held out a security that was not valid.
Laws are acquainted with no other rules of decision.

154 lllJFUli TIONS ON Till'.

But by the now institute of the rights of men, the
only persons who in equity ought to suffer, are the
only persons who are to be saved harmless : those
are to answer the debt who neither were lenders nor
borrowers, mortgagers nor mortgagees.

What had the clergy to do with these transac-
tions? What had they to do with any public en|
ment further than the extent <>f their own debt'.'
To that, to be sure, their estates were bound to
the last aere. Nothing can lead more to the true
spirit of the Assembly which fits for public con-
fiscation, with its new equity and its new morality,
than an attention to their proceeding with regard
to this debt of the clergy. The body of confiscators,
true to that monied interest for which they were
false to every other, have found the clergy com-
petent to incur a legal debt. Of course they
declared them legally entitled to the property which
their power of incurring the debt and mortgaging
the estate implied ; recognizing the rights of those
persecuted citizens, in the very act in which they
were thus grossly violated.

If, as I said, any persons are to make good
deficiencies to the public creditor, besides the public
at large, they must be those who managed the
agreement. Why therefore are not the I -
of all the comptrollers general confiscated? Why
not those of the long succession of ministers,
financiers, and bankers, who have been enriched
whilst the nation was impoverished by their deal-
ings and their counsels ? Why is not the estate
of M. Laborde declared forfeited rather than of
the archbishop of Pari-, who has had nothing to

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 155

do in the creation or in the jobbing of the public
funds. Or, if you must confiscate old landed estates
in favour of the money-jobbers, why is the penalty
confined to one description ? I do not know whether
the expenses of the duke de Choiseul have left any
thing of the infinite sums which he had -derived from
the bounty of his master, during the transactions of
a reign which contributed largely, by every species
of prodigality in war and peace, to the present debt
of France. If any such remains, why is not this
confiscated ? I remember to have been in Paris
during the time of the old government. I was
there just after the duke d'Aiguillon had been
snatched (as it was generally thought) from the
block by the hand of a protecting despotism. He
was a minister, and had some concern in the affairs
of that prodigal period. Why do I not see his
estate delivered up to the municipalities in which
it is situated? The noble family of Noailles have
long been servants (meritorious servants I admit)
to the crown of France, and have had of course
some share in its bounties. Why do I hear nothing
of the application of their estates to the public debt?
Why is the estate of the duke de Rochefoucault
more sacred than that of the cardinal de Roche-
foucault? The former is, I doubt not, a worthy
person ; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness
to talk of the use, as affecting the title to property)
he makes a good use of his revenues ; but it is no
disrespect to him to say, what authentic information
well warrants me in saying, that the use made of
a property equally valid, by his brother the cardinal
archbishop of Rouen, was far more laudable and far

156 REFLECTIONS ON THE

more public-spirited. Can one hear of the pro-
scription of such persons, and the confiscation of
their effects, without indignation and horror? He
is not a man who does not feel such emotions on
such occasions. He does not deserve the name of
a free man who will not express them.

Few barbarous' conquerors have ever made so
terrible a revolution in property. None of the heads
of the Roman factions, when they established "cru-
delem Warn Jiastam" in all their auctions of rapine,
have ever set up to sale the goods of the conquered
citizen to such an enormous amount. It must be
allowed in favour of those tyrants of antiquity, that
what was done by them could hardly be said to be
done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed,
their tempers soured, their understandings confused,
with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable
reciprocated and recent inflictions and retaliations of
blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all
bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the
return of power with the return of property to the
families of those they had injured beyond all hope of
forgiveness.

These Roman conflscators, who were yet only in
the elements of tyranny, and were not instructed
in the rights of men to exercise all sorts of cruelties
on each other without provocation, thought it neces-
sary to spread a sort of colour over their injustice.
They considered the vanquished party as composed
of traitors who had borne arms, or otherwise had
acted with hostility against the commonwealth.
They regarded them as persons who had forfeited
their property by their crimes. With you, in your

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 157

improved state of the human mind, there was
no such formality. You seized upon five millions
sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty
thousand human creatures out of their houses, be-
cause "such was your pleasure." The tyrant
Harry the Eighth of England, as he -was not better
enlightened than the Roman Mariuses and Syllas,
and had not studied in your new schools, did not
know what an effectual instrument of despotism was
to be found in that grand magazine of offensive
weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to
rob the abbies, as the club of the Jacobins have
robbed all the ecclesiastics, he began by setting on
foot a commission to examine into the crimes and
abuses which prevailed in those communities. As
it might be expected, his commission reported truths,
exaggerations, and falsehoods. But, truly or falsely,
it reported abuses and offences. However, as abuses
might be corrected, as every crime of persons does
not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities,
and as property, in that dark age, was not discovered
to be a creature of prejudice, all those abuses (and
there were enough of them) were hardly thought
sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for
his purposes to make. He therefore procured the
formal surrender of these estates. All these operose
proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided
tyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary pre-
liminaries, before he could venture, by bribing the
members of his two servile houses with a share of
the spoil, and holding out to them an eternal im-
munity from taxation, to demand a confirmation of
his iniquitous proceedings by an act of parliament.

158 REFLECTIONS ON THE

Had fete reserved him to our times, four technical
terms would have done his business, and saved him
all this trouble; be needed nothing more than one
short form of incantation — " Philosophy, Light,
Liberality, the Rights of Men."

I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny.
which no voice has hitherto ever commended under
any of their false colours; yet in these false colours
an homage was paid by despotism to justice. The
power which was above all fear and all remorse was
not set above all shame. Whilst shame keeps its
watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart;
nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds
of tyrants.

I believe every honest man sympathizes in his
reflections with our political poet on that occasion,
and will pray to avert the omen whenever these acts
of rapacious despotism present themselves to his
view or his imagination:

•■ May no such storm

Fall on our times, where ruin must reform.

Tell me (my muse; what monstrous, dire offence,

What crimes could any Christian king incense

To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust.'

Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just?

Were these their crimes .' they were his own much more ;

But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor." *

This same wealth, which is at all times tr<
and Use nut ion to indigent and rapacious despotism,

* The rest of the passage is this :

■■ \\ ho having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act. to varnish o'er the fhamc
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.

rime mi bold, but would be underi-tood
\ real, or at least a seeming good :

REVOLUTION IN IUANCL". Ij9

under all modes of polity, was your temptation to
violate property, law, and religion, united in one
object. But was the state of France so wretched
and undone, that no other resource but rapine re-
mained to preserve its existence? On this point
I wish to receive some information. When the
states met, was the condition of the finances of
France such, that, after economising on principles
of justice and mercy through all departments, no
fair repartition of burthens upon all the orders could
possibly restore them? If such an equal imposition
would have been sufficient, you well know it might
easily have been made. M. Necker, in the budget
which he laid before the orders assembled at Ver-

Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,

And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.

Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils ;

But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.

And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,

Their charity destroys, their faith defends.

Then did religion in a lazy cell,

In empty aery contemplations dwell,

And, like the block, unmoved lay : but ours,

As much too active, like the stork devours.

Is there no temp'rate region can be known,

Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone .'

Could- we not wake from that lethargic dream,

But to be restless in a worse extreme?

And for that lethargy was there no cure,

But to be cast into a calenture .'

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance

So far, to make us wish for ignorance?

And rather in the dark to grope our way,

Than, led by a false guide, to err by day ?

Who sees these dismal heaps, hut would demand,

WTiat barbarous invader sack'd the land .'

But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring

This desolation, but a Christian king ;

When nothing,, but the name of zeal, appears

'Twixt our best actions, and the worst of theirs;

What does he think our sacrilege would spare,

When such th' effects of our devotion are '. "

Coopku's Hill, by Sir John Denbam.

160 H\ 1 LECTIONS ON THE

sailles, made a detailed exposition of the state of
the French nation.*

If we give credit to him. it was nol necessary to
have recourse to any new impositions whatsoever,

to put the receipts of France on a balance with its
expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all
descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of
four hundred millions, at 531,444,000 livres; the
fixed revenue at 475,294,000, making the deficiency
56,150,000, or short of 2,200,000, sterling. But to
balance it, he brought forward savings and improve-
ments of revenue (considered as entirely certain) to
rather more than the amount of that deficiency; and
he concludes with these emphatical words: "Quel
pays, Messieurs, que celui, ou, sans impots et avec
de simples objets inappercus, on pent faire disparoitre
un deficit qui a fait tant de bruit en FAirope."f
As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and
the other great objects of public credit and political
arrangement indicated in Mons. Keeker's speech, no
doubt could be entertained, but that a very moderate
and proportioned assessment on the citizens without
distinction would have provided for all of them to
the fullest extent of their demand.

If this representation of Mons. Necker was false.
then the Assembly are in the'highest degree culpable
for having forced the king to accept as his minister,
and, since the king's deposition, for having employed
as their minister, a man who bad been capable of
abusing so notoriously the confidence of his master.

• Rapport ilc Moms, le Directeur-G6nera] des finances. I'.iit par
ordrc du Hoi a Versailles. Mai .">, 1789.
t p. 39.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 161

and their own ; in a matter too of the highest mo-
ment, and directly appertaining to his particular
office. But if the representation was exact, (as,
having always along with you conceived a high
degree of respect for M. Necker, I make no doubt
it was,) then what can be said in favour of those,
who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general
contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled by no
necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel con-
fiscation ?

Was that contribution refused on a pretext of
privilege, either on the part of the clergy or on that
of the nobility? No, certainly. As to the clergy,
they even ran before the wishes of the third order.
Previous to the meeting of the states, they had in
all their instructions expressly directed their deputies
to renounce every immunity which put them upon
a footing distinct from the condition of their fellow-
subjects. In this renunciation the clergy were even
more explicit than the nobility.

But let us suppose that the deficiency had re-
mained at the 56 millions, (or £2,200,000, sterling,)
as at first stated by M. Necker. Let . us allow that
all the resources he opposed to that deficiency were
impudent and groundless fictions; and that the As-
sembly (or their lords of articles* at the Jacobins)
were from thence justified in laying the whole bur-
then of that deficiency on the clergy, — yet, allowing
all this, a necessity of £2,200,000 sterling will not
support a confiscation to the amount of five millions.

* In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a com-
mittor sat for preparing bills; and none could pass hut those pre
viously approved by them. This committee was called lords of
articles.

p:J

162 REFLECTIONS ON Till

The imposition of .£2,200,000 on the clergy, U
partial, would have been oppressive and unjust, but
it would not have been altogether ruinous to those
on whom it was imposed; and therefore it would
not have answered the real purpose of the managers.
Perhaps persons Unacquainted with the state of
France, on hearing the clergy and the noblesse
were privileged in point of taxation, may be led
to imagine, that previous to the Revolution these
bodies had contributed nothing to the state. This
is a great mistake. They certainly did not con-
tribute equally with each other, nor either of them
equally with the commons. They both howevei
contributed largely. Neither nobility nor clergy
enjoyed any exemption from the excise on consu-
mable commodities, from duties of custom, or from
any of the other numerous indirect impositions,
which in France, as well as here, make so very large
a proportion of all payments to the public. The
noblesse paid the capitation. They paid also a land-
tax, called the twentieth penny, to the height some-
times of three, sometimes of four shillings in the
pound ; both of them direct impositions of no light
nature, and no trivial produce. The clergy of the
provinces annexed by conquest to France (which in
extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but
in wealth a much larger proportion,) paid likewise to
the capitation and the twentieth penny, at the rate
paid by the nobility. The clergy in the old pro-
vinces did not pay the capitation ; but they had
redeemed themselves at the expense of about twenty-
four millions, or a little more than a million ster-
ling. They were exempted from tin- twentieths

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 163

but then they made free gifts ; they contracted debts
for the state; and they were subject to some other
charges, the whole computed at about a thirteenth
part of their clear income. They ought to have
paid annually about forty thousand pounds more, to
put them on a par with the contribution of the
nobility.

When the terrors of this tremendous proscription
hung over the clergy, they made an offer of a con-
tribution, through the archbishop of Aix, which,
for its extravagance, ought not to have been
accepted. But it was evidently and obviously more
advantageous to the public creditor, than any thing
which could rationally be promised by the confisca-
tion. Why was it not accepted? The reason is
plain — There was no desire that the church should
be brought to serve the state. The service of the
state was made a pretext to destroy the church.
One great end in the project would have been de-
feated, if the plan of extortion had been adopted in
lieu of the scheme of confiscation. The new landed
interest connected with the new republic, and con-
nected with it for its very being, could not have
been created. This was among the reasons why
that extravagant ransom was not accepted.

The madness of the project of confiscation, on
the plan that was first pretended, soon became
apparent. To bring this unwieldy mass of landed
property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the
vast landed domain of the crown, at once into
market, was obviously to defeat the profits proposed
by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of
those lands, and indeed of all the landed estates

164 REFLECTIONS ON THE

throughout France. Such a sudden diversion of all
its circulating money from trade to land, must he an
additional mischief. What step was taken ? Did
the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the inevitable
ill effects of their projected sale, revert to the offers
of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to
travel in a course which was disgraced by any appear-
ance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a general
immediate sale, another project seems to have
succeeded. They proposed to take stock in ex-
change for the church lands. In that project great
difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be
exchanged. Other obstacles also presented them-
selves, which threw them back again upon some
project of sale. The municipalities had taken an
alarm. They would not hear of transferring the
whole plunder of the kingdom to the stock-holders
in Paris. Many of those municipalities had been
(upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indi-
gence. Money was no where to be seen. They
were therefore led to the point that was so ardently-
desired. They panted for a currency of any kind
which might revive their perishing industry. The
municipalities were then to be admitted to a share in
the spoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme
(if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether
impracticable. Public exigencies pressed upon all
sides. The minister of finance reiterated his call for
supply with a most urgent, anxious, and boding
voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first
plan of converting their bankers into bishops and
abbot>, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted
a new debt at .'i per cent, creating a new paper

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 165

currency, founded on an eventual sale of the church
lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy
in the first instance chiefly the demands made upon
them by the bank of discount, the great machine, or
paper-mill, of their fictitious wealth.

The spoil of the church was now become the only
resource of all their operations in finance — the vital
principle of all their politics — the sole security for
i the existence of their power. It was necessary by
all, even the most violent means, to put every
individual on the same bottom, and to bind the
nation in one guilty interest to uphold this act, and
the authority of those by whom it was done. In
order to force the most reluctant into a participation
of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation
compulsory in all payments. Those who consider
the general tendency of their schemes to this one
object as a centre, and a centre from which after-
wards all their measures radiate, will not think that
I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings
of the National Assembly.

To cut off all appearance of connexion between
the crown and public justice, and to bring the whole
under implicit obedience to the dictators in Paris,
the old independent judicature of the parliaments,
witli all its merits and all its faults, was wholly
abolished. Whilst the parliaments existed, it was
evident that the people might some time or other
come to resort to them, and rally under the standard
of their ancient laws. It became however a matter
of consideration, that the magistrates and officers, in
the courts now abolished, had purchased their places
at a very high rate, for which, as well as for the

16'6 REFLECTIONS ON Tin:

duty they performed, they received but a very low-
return of interest. Simple confiscation is a boon
only for the clergy; — to the lawyers some appear-
ances of equity are to be observed ; and they are to
receive compensation to an immense amount. Their
compensation becomes part of the national debt, for
the liquidation of which there is the one exhaustless
fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation
in the new church paper, which is to march with
the new principles of judicature and legislature.
The dismissed magistrates are to take their share of
martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their
own property from such a fund, and in such a manner,
as all those who have been seasoned with the ancient
principles of jurisprudence, and had been the sworn
guardians of property, must look upon with horror.
Even the clergy are to receive their miserable allow-
ance out of the depreciated paper, which is stamped
with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with
the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve.
So violent an outrage upon credit, property, and
liberty, as this compulsory paper currency, has
seldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy
and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.

In the course of all these operations, at length
comes out the grand arcanum ; — that in reality, and
in a fair sense, the lands of the church (so far as
any thing certain can be gathered from their pro-
ceedings) are not to be sold at all. By the late
resolutions of the National Assembljr, they are
indeed to be delivered to the highest bidder. But
it is to be observed, that a certain portion only nf
the jmrchasc money is to />< laid down. A period of

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 167

twelve years is to be given for the payment of the
rest. The philosophic purchasers are therefore, on
payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly into
possession of the estate. It becomes in some
respects a sort of gift to them ; to be held on the
feudal tenure of zeal to the new establishment.
This project is - evidently to let in a body of
purchasers without money. The consequence will
be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, will
pay, not only from the rents as they accrue, which
might as well be received by the state, but from
the spoil of the materials of buildings, from waste
in woods, and from whatever money, by hands
habituated to the gripings of usury, they can wring
from the miserable peasant. He is to be delivered
over to the mercenary and arbitrary discretion of
men, who will be stimulated to every species of
extortion by the growing demands on the growing
profits of an estate held under the precarious settle-
ment of a new political system.

When all the frauds, impostures, violences, ra-
pines, burnings, murders, confiscations, compulsory
paper currencies, and every description' of tyranny
and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold
this Revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to
shock the moral sentiments of all virtuous and sober
minds, the abettors of this philosophic system imme-
diately strain their throats in a declamation against
the old monarchical government of France. When
they have rendered that deposed power sufficiently
black, they then proceed in argument, as if all those
who disapprove of their new abuses must of course
be partizans of the old ; that those who reprobate

168 REFLECTIONS ON THE

their crude and violent schemes of liberty ought to
be treated as advocates foi servitude. I admit that
their necessities do compel them to this base and
contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men
to their proceedings and projects, but the supposition
that there is no third option between them and
some tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the
records of history, or by the invention of poets.
This prattling of theirs hardly deserves the name
of sophistry. It is nothing but plain impudence.
Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole
circle of the worlds of theory and practice, of any
thing between the despotism of the monarch, and
the despotism of the multitude ? Have they never
heard of a monarchy directed by laws, controlled
and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and
hereditary dignity of a nation ; and both again
controlled by a judicious check from the reason and
feeling of the people at large, acting by a suitable and
permanent organ? Is it then impossible that a man
may lie found who, without criminal ill intention,
or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and
tempered government to either of the extremes ;
and who may repute that nation to be destitute of
all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its
choice to obtain such a government with ease, "/•
rather to cotijirm it when actually possessed, thought
proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject
their country to a thousand evils, in order to
avoid it '? Is it then a truth so universally acknow-
ledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable
form into which human society can be thrown, that
a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 169

without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny,
that is, of being a foe to mankind ?

I do not know under what description to class
the present ruling authority in France. It affects to
be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct
train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble
oligarchy. But for the present I admit it to be
a contrivance of the nature and effect of what it
pretends to. I reprobate no form of government
merely upon abstract principles. There may be
situations in which the purely democratic form will
become necessary. There may be some (very few,
and very particularly circumstanced) where it would
be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be the
case of France, or of any other great country.
Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable
democracies. The ancients were better acquainted
with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors
who had seen the most of those constitutions, and
who best understood them, I cannot help concurring
with their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no
more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned
among the legitimate forms of government. They
think it rather the corruption and degeneracy, than
the sound constitution of a republic. If I recollect
rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has
many striking points of resemblance witli a tyranny.*

* When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had
elapsed from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found
it, and it is as follows :

To ?;t)os to uvto, xal cc/l<I>w 8<<nroTtK<i tcui/ (3f\Ti6vwv,
lira! T<i »jMjf/>i<rju«T«, war-wip iKtl Tci iTriTay/jLUTii' kuI a
6fi/iay<oy<K xal 6 KoXafc, ol <iutoi teal dvaXoyot' xui

Q

17" REFLECTIONS ON TH1

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the

majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the
most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever
strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they
often must ; and that oppression of the minority will
extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on
with much greater fury, than can almost ever be
apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre.
In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers
are in a much more deplorable condition than in any
other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy
compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their
wounds ; they have the plaudits of the people to
animate their generous constancy under their suf-
ferings : but those who are subjected to wrong under
multitudes, are deprived of all external consolation.
They seem deserted by mankind — overpowered by
a conspiracy of their whole species.

But admitting democracy not to have that inevi-
table tendency to party tyranny, which I suppose
it to have, and admitting it to possess as much good
in it when unmixed, as I am sure it possesses when
compounded with other forms ; does monarchy, on
its part, contain nothing at all to recommend it?

fA.d\i(TTa EKCtTEjOOl trap' tKaTepois ia-yiovo-tv, ol piv KoKa-
(ces irapd Tvpdvvofs, ol 6e oiipaytoyol irapd xols ci'ipois

Tols TOlOl/TOtS.

" The ethical character is the same ; both exercise despotism over
the better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordi-
nances and arrets are in the other : the demagogue too, and the
court favourite, are not unfrequently the same identical men, and
always bear a close analogy; and these have the principal power,
each in their respective forms of government, favourites with the
absolute monarch, and demagogues with a people such as I have
described." — Arist. Politic, lib. iv. cap. 4.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 171

I do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his
works in general left any permanent impression on
my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial
writer. But he has one observation, which in my
opinion is not without depth and solidity. He says,
that he prefers a monarchy to other governments ;
because you can better ingraft any description of
republic on a monarchy, than any thing of monarchy
upon the republican forms. I think him. perfectly
in the right. The fact is so historically ; and it
agrees well with the speculation.

I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults
of departed greatness. By a revolution in the state,
the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted
into the austere critic of the present hour. But
steady, independent minds, when they have an object
of so serious a concern to mankind as government
under their contemplation, will disdain to assume
the part of satirists and declaimers. They will
judge of human institutions as they do of human
characters. They will sort out the good from the
evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in
mortal men.

Your government in France, though usually, and
I think justly, reputed the best of the unqualified
or ill-qualified monarchies, was still full of abuses.
These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as
they must accumulate in every monarchy not under
the constant inspection of a popular representative.
I am no stranger to the faults and defects of the
subverted government of France ; and I think I am
not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric
upon any thing which is a just and natural object of

17- REFLECTIONS ON THE

(•ensure. But the question is not now of the vices
of that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it then
true, that the French government was such as to be
incapable or undeserving of reform ; so that it was
of absolute necessity that the whole fabric should be
at once pulled down, and the area cleared for the
erection of a theoretic, experimental edifice in its
place? All France was of a different opinion in
the beginning of the year 1789. The instructions
to the representatives to the states-general, from
every district in that kingdom, were filled with
projects for the reformation of that government,
without the remotest suggestion of a design to
destroy it. Had such a design been then even
insinuated, I believe there would have been but one
voice, and that voice for rejecting it with scorn and
horror. Men have been sometimes led by degrees,
sometimes hurried into things of which, if they
could have seen the whole together, they never would
have permitted the most remote approach. When
those instructions were given, there was no question
but that abuses existed, and that they demanded
a reform ; nor is there now. In the interval
between the instructions and the Revolution, tilings
changed their shape; and, in consequence of thai
change, the true question at present is, Whether
those who would have reformed, or those who have
destroyed, are in the right ?

To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of
France, you would imagine that they were talking
of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of
Tahmas Konli khan ; or at least describing the
barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, "here

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 173

the finest countries in the most genial climates in
the world are wasted by peace more than any
countries have been worried by war ; where arts
are unknown, where manufactures languish, where
science is extinguished, where agriculture decays,
where the human race itself melts away and perishes
under the eye of. the observer. Was this the case
of France? I have no way of determining the
question but by a reference to facts. Facts do not
support this resemblance. Along with much evil
there is some good in monarchy itself; and some
corrective to its evil from religion, from laws,
from manners, from opinions, the French mo-
narchy must have received ; which rendered it
(though by no means a free, and therefore by no
means a good constitution) a despotism rather in
appearance than in reality.

Among the standards upon which the effects of
government on any country are to be estimated,
I must consider the state of its population as not
the least certain. No country in which population
flourishes, and is in progressive improvement, can
be under a very mischievous government. About
sixty years ago, the Intendants of the generalities
of France made, with other matters, a report of
the population of their several districts. I have
not the books, which are very voluminous, by
me, nor do I know where to procure them, (I am
obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the less
positively,) but I think the population of France
was by them, even at that period, estimated at
twenty-two millions of souls. At the end of the
last century it had been generally calculated at

q3

174 INFLECTIONS ON THE

eighteen. On either of these estimations France
was not ill - peopled. M. Necker, who is an
authority for his own time at least equal to the
Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently
sure principles, the people of France, in the year
1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred and
seventy thousand. But was this the probable
ultimate term under the old establishment? Dr.
Price is of opinion, that the growth of population
in France was by no means at its acme in that year.
I certainly defer to Dr. Price's authority a good
deal more in these speculations than 1 do in his
general politics. This gentleman, taking ground
on M. Necker's data, is very confident, that since
the period of that minister's calculation, the French
population has increased rapidly ; so rapidly that
in the year 1789 he will not consent to rate the
people of that kingdom at a lower number than
thirty millions. After abating much (anil much
1 think ought to be abated) from the sanguine
calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the
population of France did increase considerably
during this latter period : but supposing that it
increased to nothing more than will be sufficient
t>> complete the 24,670,000 to 25 millions, still
a population of 25 millions, and that in an increasing
progress, on a space of about twenty-seven thousand
square leagues, is immense. It is, for instance.
a good deal more than the proportionable population
of this island, or even than that of England, the
best-peopled part of the united kingdom.

It is in>t universally true, that France i> a fertile
country. Considerable tracts of it are barren,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 175

and labour under other natural disadvantages. In
the portions of that territory, where things are
more favourable, as far as I am able to discover, the
numbers of the people correspond to the indul-
gence of nature.* The Generality of Lisle (this
I admit is the strongest example) upon an extent
of 4044 leagues, about ten years ago, contained
734,600 souls, which is 1772 inhabitants to each
square league. The middle term for the fest of
France is about 900 inhabitants to the same ad-
measurement.

I do not attribute this population to the deposed
government ; because I do not like to compliment
the contrivances of men, with what is due in a great
degree to the bounty of Providence. But that
decried government could not have obstructed,
most probably it favoured, the operation of those
causes, (whatever they were,) whether of nature in
the soil, or habits of industry among the people,
which has produced so large a number of the species
throughout that whole kingdom, and exhibited in
some particular places such prodigies of population.
I never will suppose that fabric of a state to be
the worst of all political institutions, which, by
experience, is found to contain a principle favour-
able (however latent it may be) to the increase of
mankind.

The wealth of a country is another, and no con-
temptible standard, by which we may judge whether,
on the whole, a government be protecting or
destructive. France far exceeds England in the

♦ T)q l'Adminigtration des Finances de la France, pai Mons.
Ncckcr. vol. i. p. 288.

1/6 REFLECTIONS ON THE

multitude of her people; but I apprehend that
her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours; ]
that it is not so equal in the distribution, nor so
ready in the circulation. I believe the difference
in the form of the two governments to be amongst
the causes of this advantage on the side of England.
I speak of England, not of the whole British do-
minions ; which, if compared with those of France,
will, in some degree, weaken the comparative rate
of wealth upon our side. But that wealth, which
will not endure a comparison with the riches of
England, may constitute a very respectable degree
of opulence. M. Necker's book, published in 17
contains an accurate and interesting collection of
facts relative to public economy and to political
arithmetic ; and his speculations on the subject are
in general wise and liberal. In that work he gives an
idea of the state of France, very remote from the
portrait of a country whose government was a
perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admitting no
cure but through the violent and uncertain remedy
of a total revolution. He affirms, that from the
year 1726 to the year 1784, there was coined at
the mint of France, in the species of gold and silver,
to the amount of about one hundred millions of
pounds sterling.!

It is impossible that M. Necker should be mis-
taken in the amount of the bullion which has been
coined in the mint. It is a matter of official record.
The reasonings of this able financier, concerning
the quantity of gold and silver which remained for

• Dc 1'Administration des Finances de la France, par M. Ni
t Vol, iii. chap. 8. and cli

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 177

circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is, about
four years before the deposition and imprisonment
of the French king, are not of equal certainty ;
but they are laid on grounds so apparently solid,
that it is not easy to refuse a considerable degree
of assent to his calculation. He calculates the
numeraire, or what we call specie, then actually
existing in France, at about eighty-eight millions of
the same English money. A great accumulation of
wealth for one country, large as that country is !
M. Necker was so far from considering this influx
of wealth as likely to cease, when he wrote in 1785,
that he presumes upon a future annual increase of
two per cent, upon the money brought into France
during the periods from which he computed.

Some adequate cause must have originally intro-
duced all the money coined at its mint into that
kingdom; and some cause as operative must have
kept at home, or returned into its bosom, such a vast
flood of treasure as M. Necker calculates to remain
for domestic circulation. Suppose any reasonable
deductions from M. Necker's computation ; the
remainder must still amount to an immense sum.
Causes thus powerful to acquire and to retain,
cannot be found in discouraged industry, insecure
property, and a positively destructive government.
Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of
France ; the multitude and opulence of her cities ;
the useful magnificence of her spacious high roads
and bridges ; the opportunity of her artificial canals
and navigations opening the conveniences of maritime
communication through a solid continent of so im-
mense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the

178 REFLECTIONS ON THE

stupcndous works of her ports and harbours, and to
her whole naval apparatus, whether for war or trade;
when I bring before my view the number of her
fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterl]
a skill, and made and maintained at so prodigious
a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrable
barrier to her enemies upon every side ; when I
recollect how very small a part of that extensive
region is without cultivation, and to what complete
perfection the culture of many of the best pro-
ductions of the earth have been brought in France;
when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures
and fabrics, second to none but ours, and in some
particulars not second ; when I contemplate the
grand foundations of charity, public and private ;
when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify
and polish life ; when I reckon the men she has bred
for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen,
the multitude of her profound lawyers and theo-
logians, her philosophers, her critics, her historians
and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred
and profane, I behold in all this something which
awes and commands the imagination, which checks
the mind on the brink of precipitate and indiscrimi-
nate censure, and which demands that we should
very seriously examine, what and how great are
the latent vices that could authorize us at once to
level so specious a fabric with the ground. I do
not recognize, in this view of things, the despotism
of Turkey. Nor do I discern the charai tor of
a government that has been, on the whole, so
oppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be
utterly unfit for all reformation. I must think such

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 179

a government well deserved to have its excellencies
heightened ; its faults corrected ; and its capacities
improved into a British constitution.

Whoever has examined into the proceedings of
that deposed government for several years hack,
cannot fail to have observed, amidst the inconstancy
and fluctuation natural to courts, an earnest en-
deavour towards the prosperity and improvement
of the country ; he must admit, that it had long
been employed, in some instances, wholly to remove,
in many considerably to correct, the abusive prac-
tices and usages that had prevailed in the state ;
and that even the unlimited power of the sovereign
over the persons of his subjects, inconsistent, as
undoubtedly it was, with law and liberty, had yet
been every day growing more mitigated in the
exercise. So far from refusing itself to reformation,
that government was open, with a censurable degree
of facility, to all sorts of projects and projectors
on the subject. Rather too much countenance was
given to the spirit of innovation, which soon was
turned against those who fostered it, and ended in
their ruin. It is but cold and no very flattering
justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for
many years, it trespassed more by levity and want
of judgment in several of its schemes, than from
any defect in diligence or in public spirit. To com-
pare the government of France for the last fifteen
or sixteen years with wise and well-constituted
establishments, during that, or during any period,
is not to act with fairness. But if in point of pro-
digality in the expenditure of money, or in point
of rigour in the exercise of power, it be compared

1<SII REFLECTIONS UN THE

with any of the former reigns, 1 believe candid
indues will give little credit to the good intentions
of those who dwell perpetually on the donations to
favourites, or on the expenses of the court, or on
the horrors of the bastile in the reign of Louis the
Sixteenth.

Whether the system, if it deserves such a name,
now built on the ruins of that ancient monarchy,
will be able to give a better account of the popula-
tion and wealth of the country, which it has taken
under its care, is a matter very doubtful. Instead
of improving by the change, I apprehend that a
long series of years must be told before it can
recover in any degree the effects of this philosophic
revolution, and before the nation can be replaced
on its former footing. If Dr. Price should think
fit, a few years hence, to favour us with an estimate
of the population of France, he will hardly be able
to make up his tale of thirty millions of souls, as
computed in 1789, or the Assembly's computation
of twenty-six millions of that year; or even M.
Necker's twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that
there are considerable emigrations from France;
and that many quitting that voluptuous climate, and
that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge
in the frozen regions, and under the British des-
potism, of Canada.

In the present disappearance of coin, no person
could think it the same country, in which the
present minister of the finances has been able to
discover fourscore millions sterling in specie. Prom
its general aspect one would conclude that it had
been for some time past under the special direction

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 181

of the learned academicians of Lapnta and Balni-
barbi.* Already the population of Paris has so
declined, that M. Necker stated to the National
Assembly the provision to be made for its subsistence
at a fifth less than what had formerly been found
requisite. It is said (and I have never heard it con-
tradicted) that a hundred thousand people are out
of employment in that city, though it is become
the seat of the imprisoned court and National As-
sembly. Nothing, I am credibly informed, can ex-
ceed the shocking and disgusting spectacle of men-
dicancy displayed in that capital. Indeed, the votes
of the National Assembly leave no doubt of the fact.
They have lately appointed a standing committee
of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a
vigorous police on this subject, and, for the first
time, the imposition of a tax to maintain the poor,
for whose present relief great sums appear on the
face of the public accounts of the year.f In the

* See Gulliver's Travels for the idea of countries governed by
philosophers.

t Travaux de charite pour sub-

venir au manque de travail a Litres. £. s. d.

Paris et dans les provinces --- 3,8G6,920 . . 161,121 13 4
Destruction de vagabondage et de

lamendicite - 1,671,417 • . 69,642 7 6

Primes pour l'importation de grains 5,671,907 . . 236,329 9 2

\s I am not quite satisfied with 11,210,244 467,093 10 0
the nature and extent of the an-
nexed article in the public ac-
counts, I do not insert it in the
above reference; but if it be un-
derstood of the purchase of pro-
vision for the poor, it is immense
indeed, and swells the total to a
formidable bulk.

Depenses relatives aux subsist-
ences, deduction fait des re-
couvremens qui out eu lieu - 39,871,790 . . 1,661,324 11 8

Total 51,082.034 . . 2.12S.4I8 1 S

It

Ks'-! hi: i i.i ■ TIONS OH THE

moan time, the leaders of the legislative eluhs and
coffee-houses are intoxicated with admiration at
their own wisdom and ability. They speak with
the most sovereign contempt of the rest of the
world. They tell tip' people, to comfort them in
the ragg with which they have clothed them, that
they are a nation of philosophers; ami. sometimes
by all the arts of quackish parade, by show, tumult,
and bustle, sometimes by the alarms of plots and
invasions, they attempt to drown the cries of in-
digence, and to divert the eyes of the observer
from the ruin and wretchedness of the state. A
brave people will certainly prefer liberty accom-
panied with a virtuous poverty, to a depraved and
wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort
and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure
it is real liberty which i^ purchased, and that she is
to be purchased at no other price. I shall always,
however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in
her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice
for her companions, and does not lead prosperity
and plenty in her train.

The advocates for this Revolution, not sati.-tied
with exaggerating; the vices of their ancient govern-
ment, strike at the fame of their country itself, by
painting almost all that could have attracted the
attention of strangers — I mean their nobility and
their clergy — as objects of horror. If this were only
a libel, there had not been much in it. But it has
practical consequences. Had your nobility and
gentry, who formed the great body of your landed
men, and the whole of your military officers, re-
sembled those of Germany, at the period when the

REVOLUTION IN I ■UANCli. 183

Hanse-towns were necessitated to confederate against
the nobles in defence of their property — had they
been like the Orsiiri and Vitelli in Italy, who
used to sally from their fortified dens to rob the
trader and traveller — had they been such as the
Mamelukes in Egypt, or the Nayres on the coast
I of Malabar, I do admit, that too critical an inquiry
might not be advisable into the means of freeing
the world from such a nuisance. The statues of
Equity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment.
The tenderest minds, confounded with the dreadful
exigence in which morality submits to the suspension
of its own rules in favour of its own principles, might
turn aside whilst fraud and violence were accom-
plishing the destruction of a pretended nobility,
which disgraced whilst it persecuted human nature.
The persons most abhorrent from blood, and treason,
and arbitrary confiscation, might remain silent spec-
tators of this civil war between the vices.

But did the privileged nobility who met under
the king's precept at Versailles, in 1789, or their
constituents, deserve to be looked on as the Nayres
or Mamelukes of this age, or as the Orsini and
Vitelli of ancient times? If I had then asked the
question, I should have passed for a madman. What
have they since done that they were to be driven
into exile, that their persons should be hunted about,
mangled, and tortured, their families dispersed, their
houses laid in ashes, and that their order should
be abolished, and the memory of it, if possible,
extinguished, by ordaining them to change the very
Domes by which they were usually known? Read
their instructions to their representatives. They

184 REFLEI TIONS on nil

breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly, and they
recommend reformation as strongly, as any other
order. Their privileges relative to contribution were
voluntarily surrendered ; as the king, from the be-
ginning, surrendered all pretence to a right of taxa-
tion. Upon a free constitution there was but one
opinion in France. The absolute monarchy was at
an end. It breathed its last, without a groan, without
struggle, without convulsion. All the struggle, all the
dissension, arose afterwards upon the preference of
a despotic democracy to a government of reciprocal
control. The triumph of the victorious party was
over the principles of a British constitution.

I have observed the affectation, which for many
years past has prevailed in Paris, even to a degree
perfectly childish, of idolizing the memory of your
Henry the Fourth. If any thing could put one out
of humour with that ornament to the kingly cha-
racter, it would be this overdone style of insidious
panegyric. The persons who have worked this
engine the most busily, are those who have ended
their panegyrics in dethroning his successor and
descendant; a man as good-natured at the least
as Henry the Fourth ; altogether as fond of his
people; and who has done infinitely more to correct
the ancient vices of the state than that great monarch
did, or we are sure he ever meant to do. Well it
is for his panegyrists that they have not him to deal
with. For Henry of Navarre was a resolute, active,
and politic prince. He possessed indeed great hu-
manity and mildness ; but a humanity and mildness
that never stood in the way of his interests. He
never sought to be loved without putting himself

REVOLUTION IN FRANC1'.. 185

first in a condition to be feared. He used suit
language with determined conduct. He asserted
and maintained his authority in the gross, and dis-
tributed his acts of concession only in the detail.
He spent the income of his prerogative nobly ;
but he took care not to break in upon the capital ;
never abandoning for a moment any of the claims
which he made under the fundamental laws, nor
sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed
him, often in the field, sometimes upon the scaffold.
Because he knew how to make his virtues respected
by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of
those whom, if they had lived in his time, he would
have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to punish-
ment along with the regicides whom he hanged after
he had famished Paris into a surrender.

If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admira-
tion of Henry the Fourth, they must rememher that
they cannot think more highly of him, than he did
of the noblesse of France ; whose virtue, honour,
courage, patriotism, and loyalty, were his constant
theme.

But the nobility of France are degenerated since
the days of Henry the Fourth. This is possible.
But it is more than I can believe to be true in any
great degree. I do not pretend to know France as
correctly as some others ; but I have endeavoured
through my whole life to make myself acquainted
with human nature ; otherwise I should be unfit to
take even my humble part in the service of mankind.
In that study I could not pass by a vast portion of
our nature, as it appeared modified in a country but
twenty-four miles from the shore of this island. On

n .'5

lH(i REFLECTIONS ON THE

my best observation, compared with my best in-
quiries, I found your nobility for the greater part
composed of men of a high spirit, and of a delicate
sense of honour, both with regard to themselves
individually, and with regard to their whole corps,
over whom they kept, beyond what is common in
other countries, a censorial eye. They were tolera-
bly well-bred ; very officious, humane, and hospit-
able; in their conversation frank and open; with
a good military tone ; and reasonably tinctured with
literature, particularly of the authors in their own
language. Many had pretensions far above this
description. I speak of those who were generally
met with.

As to their behaviour to the inferior classes, they
appeared to me to comport themselves towards them
with good-nature, and with something more nearly
approaching to familiarity, than is generally practised
with us in the intercourse between the higher and
lower ranks of life. To strike any person, even
in the most abject condition, was a thing in a man-
ner unknown, and would be highly disgraceful.
Instances of other ill-treatment of the humble part
of the community were rare : and as to attacks made
upon the property or the personal liberty of the
commons, I never heard of any whatsoever from
them ; nor, whilst the laws were in vigour under the
ancient government, would such tyranny in subjects
have been permitted. As men of landed estates,
I had no fault to find with their conduct, though
much to reprehend, and much to wish changed, in
many of the old tenures. Where the letting of their
land was by rent. I could not discover that their

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 187

agreements with their farmers were oppressive ; nor
when they were in partnership with the farmer, as
often was the case, have I heard that they had taken
the lion's share. The proportions seemed not inequi-
table. There might be exceptions ; but certainly they
were exceptions only. I have no reason to believe that
in these respects the landed noblesse of France were
worse than the landed gentry of this country ; cer-
tainly in no respect more vexatious than the land-
holders, not noble, of their own nation. In cities
the nobility had no manner of power ; in the country
very little. You know, Sir, that much of the civil
government, and the police in the most essential
parts, was not in the hands of that nobility which
presents itself firstto our consideration. The revenue,
the system and collection of which were the most
grievous parts of the French government, was not
administered by the men of the sword; nor were
they answerable for the vices of its principle, or the
vexations, where any such existed, in its manage-
ment.

Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the
nobility had any considerable share in the oppression
of the people, in cases in which real oppression
existed, I am ready to admit that they were not
without considerable faults and errors. A foolish
imitation of the worst part of the manners of Eng-
land, which impaired their natural character, without
substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to
copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly
they were. Habitual dissoluteness of manners con-
tinued beyond the pardonable period of life, was
more common amongst them than it is with us; and

188 HI U.l.i TIONS 'IN 1 HE

it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though
possibly with something of less tnisehief, by being

covered with more exterior decorum. Tiny coun-
tenanced too much that licentious philosophy which
has helped to bring on their ruin. There was
another error amongst them more fatal. Those of
the commons, who approached to or exceeded many
of the nobility in point of wealth, were not fully
admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth,
in reason and good policy, ought to bestow in every
country; though I think, not equally with that of
other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy were
too punctiliously kept asunder; less so, however,
than in Germany and some other nations.

This separation, as I have already taken the liberty
of suggesting to you, I conceive to be one principal
cause of the destruction of the old nobility. The
military, particularly, was too exclusively rest
for men of family. But, after all, this was an error
of opinion, which a conflicting opinion would have
rectified. A permanent assembly, in which the
commons had their share of power, would soon
abolish whatever was too invidious and insulting in
these distinctions; and even the faults in tiie morals
of the nobility would have been probably corrected.
by the greater varieties of occupation and pursuit to
which a constitution by orders would have given
rise.

All this violent cry against the nobility I take to
be a mere work of art. To be honoured and even
privileged by the laws, opinions, and mveteral
usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice
of ages, lias nothing to provoke horror and indigna-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 189

tion in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those
privileges, is not absolutely a crime. The strong
struggle in every individual to preserve possession
of what he has found to belong to him and to dis-
tinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice
and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates
as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve
communities in a settled state. What is there to
shock in this ? Nobility is a graceful ornament to
the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of
polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper
favemus, was the saying of a wise and good man.
It is indeed one sign of a liberal and benevolent
mind to incline to it with some sort of partial pro-
pensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own
heart, who wishes to level all the artificial institutions
which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion,
and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour,
malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the
reality, or for any image or representation of virtue,
that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had
long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do
not like to see any thing destroyed; any void pro-
duced in society ; any ruin on the face of the land.
It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatis-
faction that my inquiries and observations did not
present to me any incorrigible vices in the noblesse
of France, or any abuse which could not be removed
by a reform very short of abolition. Your noblesse
did not deserve punishment : but to degrade is to
punish.

It was with the same satisfaction I found that the
result of my inquiry concerning your clergy was not

190 REFLECTIONS ON THE

dissimilar. It is no soothing news to my ears, that
great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not
with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak
evil of those whom they are going to plunder. I
rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated,
when profit is looked for in their punishment. An
enemy is a had witness : a robber is a worse. Vices
and abuses there were undoubtedly in that order,
and must be. It was an old establishment, and not
frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the
individuals that merited confiscation of their sub-
stance, nor those cruel insults and degradations, and
that unnatural persecution, which have been substi-
tuted in the place of meliorating regulation.

If there had been any just cause for this new
religious persecution, the atheistic libellers, who act
as trumpeters to animate the populace to plunder,
do not love any body so much as not to dwell with
complacence on the vices of the existing clergy.
This they have not done. They find themselves
obliged to rake into the histories of former ages
(which they have ransacked witli a malignant and
profligate industry) for every instance of oppression
and persecution which has been made by that body
or in its favour, in order to justify, upon very ini-
quitous, because very illogical principles of retaliation.
their own persecutions and their own cruelties.
After destroying all other genealogies and family
distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of crimes.
It is not very just to chastise men for the offences
of their natural ancestors : but to take the fiction of
ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground for
punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 191

except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of
refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy
of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes
men, many, if not most, of whom abhor the violent
conduct of ecclesiastics in former times as much as
their present persecutors can do, and who would be
as loud and as strong in the expression of that sense,
if they were not well aware of the purposes for which
all this declamation is employed.

Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the
members, but not for their punishment. Nations
themselves are such corporations. As well might we
in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all
Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought
upon us in the several periods of our mutual hostili-
ties. You might, on your part, think yourselves
justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account
of the unparalleled calamities brought upon the
people of France by the unjust invasions of our
Henries and our Edwards. Indeed we should be
mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon
each other, full as much as you are in the unprovoked
persecution of your present countrymen, on account
of the conduct of men of the same name in other
times.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from
history. On the contrary, without care it may be
used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happi-
ness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our
instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom
from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine,
furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties

192 REFLECTIONS ON THE

in church and state, and supplying the means of
keeping alive, or reviving dissensions and animosities,
and adding fuel to civil fury. Histoiy consists,
for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon
the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust,
sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the
train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public
with the same

•' troublous storms that toss

The private state, and render life unsweet."

These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion,
morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights
of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always
found in some specious appearance of a real good.
You would not secure men from tyranny and
sedition, by rooting out of the mind the principles to
which these fraudulent pretexts apply'? If you did,
you would root out every thing that is valuable in
the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so
the ordinary actors and instruments in great public
evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, par-
liaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains.
You would not cure the evil by resolving that
there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of
state, nor of the gospel ; no interpreters of law ; no
general officers ; no public councils. You might
change the names. The things in some shape must
remain. A certain quantum of power must always
exist in the community, in some hands, and under
some appellation. Wise men will apply their reme-
dies to vices, not to names ; to the causes of evil
which are permanent, not to the occasional organs
by which they act, and the transitory modes in

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 193

which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise
historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two
ages the same fashion in their pretexts, and the same
modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more
inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the
fashion is gone by. The very same vice assumes
a new body. The spirit transmigrates ; and, far
from losing its principle of life by the change of its
appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with
the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks
abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are
gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing the tomb. You
are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions,
whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is
thus with all those, who, attending only to the shell
and husk of history, think they are waging war with
intolerance, pride, and cruelty; whilst, under colour
of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties,
they are authorizing and feeding the same odious
vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse.

Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves
as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers
of Calvin, at the infamous massacre of St. Bartho-
lomew. What should we say to those who could
think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the
abominations and horrors of that time ? They are
indeed brought to abhor that massacre. Ferocious
as they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike
it ; because the politicians and fashionable teachers
have no interest in giving their passions exactly the
same direction. Still however they find it their
interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive.
It was but the other day that they caused this very

s

194 REFLECTIONS ON THE

massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion
of the descendants of those who committed it. In this
tragic farce they produced the cardinal of Lorraine
in his robes of function, ordering general slaughter.
Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians
abhor persecution, and loathe the effusion of blood?
— No ; it was to teach them to persecute their own
pastors; it was to excite them, by raising adisgnsl
and horror of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting
down to destruction an order, which, if it ought to
exist at all, ought to exist not only in safety, but in
reverence. It was to stimulate their cannibal appe-
tites (which one would think had been gorged suffi-
ciently) by variety and seasoning; and to quicken
them to an alertness in new murders and massacres.
if it should suit the purpose of the Guises of the day.
An assembly, in which sat a multitude of priests and
prelates, was obliged to suffer this indignity at its
door. The author was not sent to the gallies, nor
the players to the house of correction. Not long
after this exhibition, those players came forward to
the assembly to claim the rites of that very religion
which they had dared to expose, and to shew their
prostituted faces in the senate, whilst the archbishop
of Paris, whose function was known to his people
only by his prayers and benedictions, and his wealth
only by his alms, is forced to abandon his house, and
to fly from his flock (as from ravenous Wolves),
because, truly, in the sixteenth century, the cardinal
of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer.

Such is the effect of the perversion of history, by
those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have per-
verted every other part of learning. But those who

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 195

will stand upon that elevation of reason, which places
centuries under our eye, and brings things to the
true point of comparison, which obscures little names,
and effaces the colours of little parties, and to which
nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral quality
of human actions, will say to the teachers of the
Palais Royal, — the cardinal of Lorraine was the
murderer of the sixteenth century, you have the
glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth ; and
this is the only difference between you. But history,
in the nineteenth century, better understood and
better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized pos-
terity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous
ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates
not to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive
atheists of future times, the enormities committed
by the present practical zealots and furious fanatics
of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state,
is more than punished whenever it is embraced.
It will teach posterity not to make war upon either
religion or philosophy, for the abuse which the
hypocrites of both have made of the two most
valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty
of the universal Patron, who in all things eminently
favours and protects the race of man.

If your clergy, or any clergy, should shew them-
selves vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to
human infirmity, and to those professional faults
which can hardly be separated from professional vir-
tues, though their vices never can countenance the
exercise of oppression, I do admit that they would
naturally have the effect of abating very much
of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed

196 REFLECTIONS ON THE

measure and justice in their punishment. I can
allow in clergymen, through all their divisions, some
tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflow-
ings of zeal for its propagation, some predilection
to their own state and office, some attachment to
the interest of their own corps, some preference to
those who listen with docility to their doctrines,
beyond those who scorn and deride them. I allow
all this, because I am a man who have to deal with
men, and who would not, through a violence of
toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance.
I must bear with infirmities until they fester into
crimes.

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions,
from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a
watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that
the body of your clergy had passed those limits of
a just allowance ? From the general style of your
late publications of all sorts, one would be led to
believe that your clergy in France were a sort of
monsters ; a horrible composition of superstition,
ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But
is this true? Is it true, that the lapse of time, the
cessation of conflicting interests, the woeful experience
of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no
sort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds ?
Is it true, that they were daily renewing invasions
on the civil power, troubling the domestic quiet of
their country, and rendering the operations of its
government feeble and precarious? Is it true, that
the clergy of our times have pressed down the laity
with an iron hand, and were, in all places, lighting
up the tires of a savage persecution? Did they by

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 197

every fraud endeavour to increase their estates ?
, Did they use to exceed the due demands on estates
that were their own ? Or, rigidly screwing up right
into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a
vexatious extortion':' When not possessed of power,
were they rilled with the vices of those who envy it?
Were they inflamed with a violent, litigious spirit of
controversy? Goaded on with the ambition of intel-
lectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the
face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre
the priests of other descriptions, to pull down altars,
and. to make their way over the ruins of subverted
governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes
flattering, sometimes forcing, the consciences of men
from the jurisdiction of public institutions into a
submission to their personal authority, beginning
with a claim of liberty, and ending with an abuse of
power ?

These, or some of these, were the vices objected,
and not wholly without foundation, to several of
the churchmen of former times, who belonged to
the two great parties which then divided and dis-
tracted Europe.

If there was in France, as in other countries
there visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any
increase of these vices, instead of loading the pre-
sent clergy with the crimes of other men, and the
odious character of other times, in common equity
they ought to be praised, encouraged, and support-
ed, in their departure from a spirit which disgraced
their predecessors, and for having assumed a temper
of mind and manners more suitable to their sirred
function.

s 3

198 INFLECTIONS ON THE

When my occasions took me into France, to-
wards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under
all their forms, engaged a considerable part of my
curiosity. So far from finding (except from one
set of men, not then very numerous though very
active) the complaints and discontents against that
body, which some publications had given me reason
to expect, I perceived little or no public or private
uneasiness on their account. On further examina-
tion, I found the clergy, in general, persons of
moderate minds and decorous manners ; I include
the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I had
not the good fortune to know a great many of the
parochial clergy : but in general I received a per-
fectly good account of their morals, and of their
attention to their duties. With some of the higher
clergy I had a personal acquaintance ; and of the
rest in that class, a very good means of information.
They were, almost all of them, persons of noble
birth. They resembled others of their own rank ;
and where there was any difference, it was in their
favour. They were more fully educated than the
military noblesse ; so as by no means to disgrace
their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness
for the exercise of their authority. They seemed
to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and
open ; with the hearts of gentlemen, and men of
honour ; neither insolent nor servile in their man-
ners and conduct. They seemed to me rather a
superior class ; a set of men, amongst whom you
would not be surprised to find a Fenclun. 1 saw
among the clergy in Paris (many of the description
are not to be mel with any where) men of jirent

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 199

learning and candour ; and I had reason to believe
that this description was not confined to Paris.
What I found in other places, I know, was acci-
dental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample.
; I spent a few days in a provincial town, where, in
the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings
with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons
who would have done honour to any church. They
were all well informed ; two of them of deep, general,
and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, oriental
and western, particularly in their own profession.
They had a more extensive knowledge of our
English divines than I expected ; and they entered
into the genius of those writers with a critical
accuracy. One of these gentlemen is since dead,
the Abbe Morangis. I pay this tribute, without
reluctance, to the memory of that noble, reverend,
learned, and excellent person ; and I should do
the same, with equal cheerfulness, to the merits
of the others, who I believe are still living, if
I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to
serve.

Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all
titles, persons deserving of general respect. They
are deserving of gratitude from me, and from many
English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of
our nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and
for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with
no common sensibility. What I say of them is
a testimony, as far as one feeble voice can go,
which I owe to truth. Whenever the question of
this unnatural persecution is concerned, 1 will pay

•200 REFLECTIONS ON THE

it. No one shall prevent me from being just and
grateful. The time is fitted for the duty; and it
is particularly becoming to shew our justice and
gratitude, when those who have deserved well of
us and of mankind are labouring under popular
obloquy, and the persecutions of oppressive power.

You had before your Revolution about a hundred
and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of
eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When
we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare
virtue. I believe the instances of eminent depravity
may be as rare amongst them as those of transcendent
goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness
may be picked out, I do not question it, by those
who delight in the investigation which leads to such
discoveries. A man as old as I am will not be
astonished that several, in every description, do not
lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to
wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all,
by some expected, but by none exacted with more
rigour, than by those who are the most attentive to
their own interests, or the most indulgent to their
own passions. When I was in France, I am certain
that the number of vicious prelates was not great.
Certain individuals among them, not distinguishable
for the regularity of their lives, made some amends
for their want of the severe virtues, in their posses-
sion of the liberal ; and were endowed with qualities
which made them useful in the church and state.
I am told that, with few exceptions, Louis the
Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, in
his promotions to that rank, than his immediate
predecessor ; and I believe (as some spirit of reform

EEVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 201

has prevailed through the whole reign,) that it may-
be true. But the present ruling power has shewn
a disposition only to plunder the church. It has
punished oil prelates ; which is to favour the vici-
ous, at least in point of reputation. It has made
a degrading pensionary establishment, to which no
man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine
his children. It must settle into the lowest classes
of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are
not numerous enough for their duties ; as these
duties are, beyond measure, minute and toilsome ;
as you have left no middle classes of clergy at their
ease, in future nothing of science or erudition can
exist in the Gallican church. To complete the
project, without the least attention to the rights of
patrons, the Assembly has provided in future an
elective clergy ; an arrangement which will drive
out of the clerical profession all men of sobriety ; all
who can pretend to independence in their function
or their conduct ; and which will throw the whole
direction of the public mind into the hands of a
set of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering
wretches, of such condition and such habits of life
as will make their contemptible pensions (in com-
parison of which the stipend of an exciseman is
lucrative and honourable,) an object of low and
illiberal intrigue. Those officers, whom they still
call bishops, are to be elected to a provision com-
paratively mean, through the same arts, (that is,
electioneering arts,) by men of all religious tenets
that are known or can be invented. The new
lawgivers have not ascertained any thing whatsoever
concerning their qualifications, relative either to

202 REFLECTIONS ON THE

doctrine or to morals ; no more than they have
done with regard to the subordinate clergy : nor
does it appear but that both the higher and the
lower may, at their discretion, practise or preach
any mode of religion or irreligion that they please.
I do not yet see what the jurisdiction of bishops
over their subordinates is to be, or whether they
are to have any jurisdiction at all.

In short, Sir, it seems to me, that this now
ecclesiastical establishment is intended only to be
temporary, and preparatory to the utter abolition,
under any of its forms, of the Christian religion,
whenever the minds of men are prepared for this
last stroke against it, by the accomplishment of the
plan for bringing its ministers into universal con-
tempt. They who will not believe that the philo-
sophical fanatics who guide in these matters, have
long entertained such a design, are utterly ignorant
of their character and proceedings. These enthu-
siasts do not scruple to avow their opinion, that
a state can subsist without any religion better than
with one ; and that they are able to supply the
place of any good which may be in it, by a project
of their own — namely, by a sort of education they
have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the
physical wants of men ; progressively carried to an
enlightened self-interest, which, when well under-
stood, they tell us, will identify with an interest
more enlarged and public. The scheme of this
education has been long known. Of late they
distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new
nomenclature of technical terms'* by the name of
a Civic Education .

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 203

I hope their partisans in England (to whom
I rather attribute very inconsiderate conduct, than
the ultimate object in this detestable design) will
succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics,
nor in the introduction of a principle of popular
election to our bishopricks and parochial cures.
This, in the present condition of the world, would
be the last corruption of the church; the utter
ruin of the clerical character ; the most dangerous
shock that the state ever received through a mis-
understood arrangement of religion. I know well
enough that the bishopricks and cures, under kingly
and seignoral patronage, as now they are in England,
and as they have been lately in France, are some-
times acquired by unworthy methods ; but the other
mode of ecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely
more surely and more generally to all the evil arts
of low ambition, which, operating on and through
greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion.

Those of you who have robbed the clergy, think
that they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all
protestant nations ; because the clergy, whom they
have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to
mockery and scorn, are of the Roman Catholic,
that is, of their own pretended persuasion. I have
no doubt that some miserable bigots will be found
here, as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties
different from their own, more than they love the
substance of religion ; and who are more angry with
those who differ from them in their particular plans
and systems, than displeased with those who attack
the foundation of our common hope. These men
will write and speak on the subject in the manner

'204 REFLECTIONS ON THE

that is to be expected from their temper and cha-
racter. Burnet says, that, when he was in France,
in the year 1683, "the method which carried over
the men of the finest parts to popery was this —
they brought themselves to doubt of the whole
Christian religion. When that was once done, it
seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or
form they continued outwardly." If this was then
the ecclesiastic policy of France, it is what they
have since but too much reason to repent of. They
preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable
to their ideas. They succeeded in destroying that
form; and atheism has succeeded in destroying
them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story ;
because I have observed too much of a similar spirit
(for a little of it is " much too much ") amongst
ourselves. The humour, however, is not general.

The teachers who reformed our religion in Eng-
land, bore no sort of resemblance to your present
reforming doctors in Paris. Perhaps they were (like
those whom they opposed) rather more than could
be wished under the influence of a party spirit ;
but they were most sincere believers ; men of the
most fervent and exalted piety; ready to die (as
some of them did die) like true heroes in defence
of their particular ideas of Christianity ; as they
would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully,
for that stock of general truth, for the branches
of which they contended with their blood. These
men would have disavowed with horror those wretches
who claimed a fellowship with them upon no other
titles than those of their having pillaged the persons
with whom they maintained controversies, and their

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 205

having despised the common religion, for the purity
of which they exerted themselves with a zeal which
unequivocally bespoke their highest reverence for
the substance of that system which they wished to
reform. Many of their descendants have retained
the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict)
with more moderation. They do not forget that
justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion.
Impious men do not recommend themselves to their
communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any
description of their fellow-creatures.

We hear these new teachers continually boasting
of their spirit of toleration. That those persons
should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be
of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal
neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of
benevolence which arises from contempt, is no true
charity. There are in England abundance of men
who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They
think the dogmas of religion, though in different
degrees, are all of moment ; and that amongst them
there is, as amongst all things of value, a just
ground of preference. They favour, therefore,
and they tolerate. They tolerate, not because they
despise opinions, but because they respect justice.
They would reverently and affectionately protect
all religions, because they love and venerate the
great principle upon which they all agree, and the
great object to which they are all directed. They
begin more and more plainly to discern, that we
have all a common cause, as against a common
enemy. They will not be so misled by the spirit
of faction, as not to distinguish what is done in

206 UEFLECTIONS ON THE

favour of their subdivision, from those acts of hos-
tility which, through some particular description,
are aimed at the whole corps, in which they them-
selves, under another denomination, are included.
It is impossible for me to say what may be the
character of every description of men amongst us.
But I speak for the greater part ; and for them
I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their
doctrine of good works ; that, so far from calling
you into their fellowship on such title, if your pro-
fessors are admitted to their communion, they must
carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness of
the proscription of innocent men ; and that they
must make restitution of all stolen goods whatsoever.
Till then they are none of ours.

You may suppose that we do not approve your
confiscation of the revenues of bishops, and deans,
and chapters, and parochial clergy possessing in-
dependent estates arising from land, because we
have the same sort of establishment in England.
That objection, you will say, cannot hold as to the
confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and
the abolition of their order. It is true that this
particular part of your general confiscation does not
affect England, as a precedent in point : but the
reason applies, and it goes a great way. The long
parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chap-
ters in England on the same ideas upon which your
Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders.
But it is in the principle of injustice that the
danger lies, and not in the description of persons on
whom it is first exercised. I see, in a country very
Rear us, a course of policy pursued, which sets

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 207

justice, the common concern of mankind, at defiance.
With the National Assembly of France, possession
is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see the
National Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of
prescription, which one of the greatest of their own
lawyers* tells us, with great truth, is a part of the
law of nature. He tells us, that the positive as-
certainment of its limits, and its security from in-
vasion, were among the causes for which civil society
itself has been instituted. If prescription be once
shaken, no species of property is secure, when it
once becomes an object large enough to tempt the
cupidity of indigent power. I see a practice per-
fectly correspondent to their contempt of this great
fundamental part of natural law. I see the con-
fiscators begin with bishops, and chapters, and monas-
teries ; but I do not see them end there. I see
the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages
of that kingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly
with the compliment of a debate,) deprived of their
possessions, and, in lieu of their stable independent
property, reduced to the hope of some precarious,
charitable pension, at the pleasure of an Assembly,
which of course will pay little regard to the rights
of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises those of
legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence of
the first inglorious victories, and pressed by the
distresses caused by the lust of unhallowed lucre,
disappointed but not discouraged, they have at
length ventured completely to subvert all property
of all descriptions throughout the extent of a great

208 REFLECTIONS ON THE

kingdom. They have compelled all men, in all
transactions of commerce, in the disposal of lands,
in civil dealing, and through the whole communion
of life, to accept as perfect payment and good and
lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on
a projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges
of liberty or property have they left? The tenant-
right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest in a hovel,
the good-will of an ale-house or a baker's shop,
the very shadow of a constructive property, are
more ceremoniously treated in our parliament, than
with you the oldest and most valuable landed pos-
sessions, in the hands of the most respectable per-
sonages, or than the whole body of the monied and
commercial interest of your country. We entertain
a high opinion of the legislative authority ; but we
have never dreamt that parliaments had any right
whatever to violate property, to overrule prescription,
or to force a currency of their own fiction in the
place of that which is real, and recognized by the
law of nations. But you, who began with refusing
to submit to the most moderate restraints, have
ended by establishing an unheard-of despotism. I
find the ground upon which your contiscators go
is this : that indeed their proceedings could not be
supported in a court of justice; but that the rules
of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly.*
So that this legislative assembly of a free nation
sits, not for the security, but for the destruction
of property, and not of property only, but of every
rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of
those instruments which can alone give it circulation.

• Speech of Mr. Cainus. published by order of the National Assembly.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 209

When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth
century, had filled Germany with confusion, by their
system of levelling, and their wild opinions concern,
ing property, to what country in Europe did not the
progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm?
Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with
epidemical fanaticism, because of all enemies it is
that against which she is the least able to furnish any
kind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the
spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a
multitude of writings, dispersed with incredible assi-
duity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all
the streets and places of public resort in Paris.
These writings and sermons have filled the populace
with a black and savage atrocity of mind, which
supersedes in them the common feelings of nature,
as well as all sentiments of morality and religion ;
insomuch that these wretches are induced to bear
with a sullen patience the intolerable distresses
brought upon them by the violent convulsions and
permutations that have been made in property?*
The spirit of proselytism attends this spirit of fanati-
cism. They have societies to cabal and correspond
at home and abroad for the propagation of their

• Whether the following description is strictly true, 1 know not;
but it is what the publishers would have pass for true, in order to
animate others. In a letter from Toul, given in one of their papers,
is the following passage concerning the people of that district:
" Dans la Revolution actuelle, ils ont resiste a toutes les si'ductinvs
da bigotitme, mix persicuUotu et aux Iracasseries des ennemis de la
Revolution. Oubliant leurx j>lus grand* iiitirrts pour rendre hom-
mage aux vucs d'ordre general qui ont determine l'Assemblee
Nationale, ils voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer cette foulc
d'etablissemens ecdesiastiques parlesquels ihsubsUtoicnt ; et meme,
en perdant leur siege episcopal la seul de toutes ses ressources qui
ponvoit, on plutot qui demit, en inulc t'quitr. leur ctre conservee ;

T 3

210 REFLECTIONS ON TJHB

tenets. The republic of Berne, one of the happiest,
the most prosperous, and the best governed countries
upon earth, is one of the great objects, at the de-
struction of which they aim. I am told they have
in some measure succeeded in sowing there the
seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout
Germany. Spain and Italy have not been untried.
England is not left out of the comprehensive sclieme
of their malignant charity ; and in England we rind
those who stretch out their arms to them, who re-
commend their example from more than one pulpit,
and who choose, in more than one periodical meet-
ing, publicly to correspond with them, to applaud
them, and to hold them up as objects for imitation ;
who receive from them tokens of confraternity,
and standards consecrated amidst their rites and
mysteries ;* who suggest to them leagues of per-
petual amity, at the very time when the power to
which our constitution has exclusively delegated the
federative capacity of this kingdom, may find it
expedient to make war upon them.

It is not the confiscation of our church pro-
perty from this example in France that I dread,
though I think this would be no trifling evil. The
great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever

condamnes it la plus effrayante misire, sans avoir tti >ti jut tire
entendtu, Us ne murmurent point, ils restent fldeles aux principes
duplus pur patriotisme ; ilssont encore pretes a verier leur sain/ pour
le maintien de la constitution, qui va reduire leur ville it la /i/iis
deplorable nulliti." These people are not supposed to have endured
those sufferings and injustices in a struggle for liberty, for the same
account states truly that they had been always free; their patience
in beggar; and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance,
the most flagrant and confessed injustice, if strictly true, can be

nothing but the effect of this dire fanaticism. A gre Li multitude all

over France is in the same condition and the same temper.

* See the proceedings of the Oonfi deration at \

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 211

be considered in England as the policy of a state to
seek a resource in confiscations of any kind ; or that
any one description of citizens should be brought to
regard any of the others as their proper prey.*
Nations are wading deeper and deeper into an ocean
of boundless debt. Public debts, which at first were
a security to governments, by interesting many in
the public tranquillity, are likely in their excess to
become the means of their subversion. If govern-
ments provide for these debts by heavy impositions,
they perish by becoming odious to the people. If
they do not provide for them, they will be undone
oy the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties ;
;[ mean an extensive, discontented monied interest,
njured and not destroyed. The men who compose
;his interest look for their security, in the first in-
stance, to the fidelity of government ; in the second,
,o its power. If they find the old governments
jffete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so '
is not to be of sufficient vigour for their purposes,
hey may seek new ones that shall be possessed of

• " Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam ill i quibus
njuste ademptum est, idcireo plus etiam valent ? Non enim nu-
nero haec judicantur sed pondere. Quam autem habet aequitatem,
it agrum multis annis, aut etiam Sificulis ante possessum, qui nullum
labuit habeat ; qui autem habuit amittat ? Ac. propter hoc injuria
;enus, Lacedaemonii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt : Agin regem
quod rmnquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt : exque eo
empore tanfce discordise secutae sunt, ut et tyranni existerint, et
iptimates exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respublica
lilaberetur. Nee vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Groe-
•iam evertit contagionibus malorum, qua? a Lacedsemoniis profecta?
uanarunt latius." — After speaking of the conduct of the model of
rue patriots, Aratus of Sycion, which was in a very different spirit,
le says, " Sic par est agere cum civibus ; non ut bis jam vidimus,
i—THm in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere praconis. At
He Graecus (id quod fuit sapientis et pnestantis viri) omnibus eon
ulendum esse putavit : eaque est summa ratio et sapicntia bom
ivis, commoda civium nnn divellere, Bed "nines eadem Xquitate
ontintre. "—Cic. Off. 1. 2.

•Jl'2 REFLECTIONS ON THE

more energy ; and this energy will be derived, not
from an acquisition of resources, but from a con-
tempt of justice. Revolutions are favourable to
confiscation ; and it is impossible to know under
what obnoxious names the next confiscations will
be authorized. I am sure that the principles pre-
dominant in France extend to very many persons,
and descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think
their innoxious indolence their security. This kind
of innocence in proprietors may be argued into in-
utility ; and inutility into an unfitness for their
estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder.
In many others there is a hollow murmuring under
ground ; a confused movement is felt, that threatens
a general earthquake in the political world. Already
confederacies and correspondences of the most extra-
ordinary nature are forming in several countries.* In
such a state of things we ought to hold ourselves upon
our guard. In all mutations (if mutations must be) the
circumstance which will serve most to blunt the edge
of their mischief, and to promote what good may be
in them, is, that they should find us with our minds
tenacious of justice, and tender of property.

But it will be argued, that this confiscation in
France ought not to alarm, other nations. They say
it is not made from wanton rapacity ; that it is a
great measure of national policy, adopted to remove
an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. It
is witli the greatest difficulty that I am able to
separate policy from justice. Justice is itself the

- See two books entitled, " Enige Originalichriften des lUumina

uml rolpon des tlluminatenordens." Xunchen,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 213

great standing policy of civil society ; and any
eminent departure from it, under any circum-
stances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy
at all.

When men are encouraged to go into a certain
mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in
that mode as in a lawful occupation ; when they
have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits
to it ; when the law had long made their adherence
to its rules a ground of reputation, and their de-
parture from them a ground of disgrace and even
of penalty — I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by
an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their
minds and their feelings ; forcibly to degrade them
from their state and condition, and to stigmatize
with shame and infamy that character and those
customs which before had been made the measure of
their happiness and honour. If to this be added an
expulsion from their habitations, and a confiscation
of all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to
discover how this despotic sport, made of the feelings,
consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can
be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.

If the injustice of the course pursued in France
be clear, the policy of the measure, that is, the
public benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at
least as evident, and at least as important. To a man
who acts under the influence of no passion, who has
nothing in view in his projects but the public good,
a great difference will immediately strike him,
between what policy would dictate on the original
introduction of such institutions, and on a question
of their total abolition, where they have cast their

"214 aEFLECTIONS ON THE

roots wide and deep, and where, by long habit, things
more valuable than themselves are so adapted to
them, and in a manner interwoven with them, that
the one cannot be destroyed without notably impair-
ing the other. He might be embarrassed, if the case
were really such as sophisters represent it in their
paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most
questions of state, there is a middle. There is
something else than the mere alternative of absolute
destruction, or unr.eformed existence. Spartam
iiactus es ; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a
rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart
from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot con-
ceive how any man can have brought himself to that
pitch of presumption, to consider his country as
nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scrib-
ble what ever he pleases. A man full of warm specu-
lative benevolence may wish his society otherwise
constituted than he finds it ; but a good patriot, and
a true politician, always considers how he shall make
the most of the existing materials of his country.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve,
taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Every thing else is vulgar in the conception, perilous
in the execution.

There are moments in the fortune of states, when
particular men are called to make improvements
by great mental exertion. In those moments, even I
when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their
prince and country, and to be invested with full
authority, they have not always apt instruments.
A politician, to do great things, looks for a power •,
what our workmen call a purchase s and if he 9ndfl

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 215

that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be
at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions,
in my opinion, was found a great power for the
mechanism of politic benevolence. There were
revenues with a public direction ; there were men
wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes,
without any other than public ties and public prin-
ciples ; men without the possibility of converting
the estate of the community into a private fortune ;
men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for
some community ; men to whom personal poverty
is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place
of freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possi-
bility of making such things when he wants them.
The winds blow as they list. These institutions are
the products of enthusiasm ; they are the instruments
of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials ; they
are the gifts of nature or of chance ; her pride is in
the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate
and their fortunes are things particularly suited to
a man who has long views ; who meditates designs
that require time in fashioning, and which propose
duration when they are accomplished. He is not
deserving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in
the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained
the command and direction of such a power as
existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits
of such corporations as those which you have
rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting
it to the great and lasting benefit of his country.
On the view of this subject, a thousand uses suggest
themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy any
power, growing wild from the rank productive force

216 REFLECTIONS ON THE

of the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the
moral world, to the destruction of the apparently
active properties of bodies in the material. It would
be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our com-
petence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air
in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or
of magnetism. These energies always existed in
nature, and they were always discernible. They
seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious,
some no better than a sport to children ; until con-
templative ability, combining with practic skill,
tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and
rendered them at once the most powerful and the
most tractable agents, in subservience to the great
views and designs of men. Did fifty thousand
persons, whose mental and whose bodily labour you
might direct, and so many hundred thousand a-year
of a revenue which was neither lazy nor supersti-
tious, appear too big for your abilities to wield !
Had you no way of using the men but by converting
monks into pensioners ? Had you no way of turn-
ing the revenue to account, but through the impro-
vident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you were
thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in
its natural course. Your politicians do not under-
stand their trade ; and therefore they sell their tools.
But the institutions savour of superstition in their
very principle ; and they nourish it by a permanent
and standing influence. This I do not mean to dis-
pute ; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving
from superstition itself any resources which may
thence be furnished for the public advantage. You
derive benefits from many dispositions and many

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 217

passions of the human mind, which are of as doubtful
a colour in the moral eye, as superstition itself.
It was your business to correct and mitigate every
thing which was noxious in this passion, as in all the
passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possi-
ble vices ? In its possible excess I think it becomes
a very great evil. . It is, however, a moral subject,
and of course admits of all degrees and all modifica-
tions. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds ;
and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it,
in some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other,
else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found
necessary to the strongest. The body of all true
religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will
of the Sovereign of the world ; in a confidence in
his declarations ; and in imitation of his perfections.
The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end ; it may be auxiliary. Wise men who, as
such, are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the
Munera Terrcs,') are not violently attached to these
things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom
is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are
the rival follies, which mutually wage so Unrelenting
a war ; and which make so cruel a use of their ad-
vantages, as they can happen to engage the immode-
rate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their
quarrels. Prudence would be neuter ; but if, in the
contention between fond attachment and fierce
antipathy concerning things in their nature not
made to produce such heats, a prudent man were
obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses
of enthusiasm be would condemn or bear, perhaps he
would think the superstition which builds, to be more

2lX aEFLECTIONS ON THE

tolerable than that which demolishes — that which
adorns a country, than that winch deforms it — that
which endows, than that which plunders — that which
disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that which
stimulates to real injustice — that which leads a man
to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that
which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, 1 think, is very nearly the
state of the question between the ancient founders
of monkish superstition, and the superstition of the
pretended philosophers of the hour.

Tor the present I postpone all consideration of the
supposed public profit of the sale, which however
I conceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here
only consider it as a transfer of property. On the
policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.

In every prosperous community something more
is produced than goes to the immediate support of
the producer. This surplus forms the income of the
landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labour. But this idleness is itself the
spring of labour; this repose the spur to industry.
The only concern of the state is, that the capital
taken in rent from the land, should be returned
again to the industry from whence it came ; and that
its expenditure should be with the least possible
detriment to the morals of those who expend it, and
to those of the people to whom it is returned.

In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and per-
sonal employment, a sober legislator would carefully
compare the possessor whom he was recommended
to expel, with the stranger who was proposed to fill

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 219

his place. Before the inconveniences are incurred
which must attend all violent revolutions in property
through extensive confiscation, we ought to have
some rational assurance that the purchasers of the
confiscated property will be in a considerable degree
more laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less
disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of
the gains of the labourer, or to consume on them-
selves a larger share than is fit for the measure of
an individual ; or that they should be qualified to
dispense the surplus in a more steady and equal
mode, so as to answer the purposes of a politic
expenditure, than the old possessors, call those
possessors bishops, or canons, or commendatory
abbots, or monks, or what you please. The monks
are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise
employed than by singing in the choir. They are
as usefully employed as those who neither sing nor
say. As usefully even as those who sing upon the
stage. They are as usefully employed as if they
worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable
servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often
most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations, to
which by the social economy so many wretches are
inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious
to disturb the natural course of things, and to impede,
in any degree, the great wheel of circulation which
is turned by the strangely-directed labour of these
unhappy people, I should be infinitely more inclined
forcibly to rescue them from their miserable industry,
than violently to disturb the tranquil repose of
monastic quietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy,
might better justify me in the one than in the

220 Mil li lloss ON l Hi

other. It is a subject on which I have often
reflected, and never reflected without feeling from
it. I am sure that no consideration, except the
necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury, and
the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious
way will distribute the surplus product of the soil,
can justify the toleration of such trades and employ-
ments in a well-regulated state. But for this purpose
of distribution, it seems to me that the idle expenses
of monks are quite as well directed as the idle
expenses of us lay-loiterers.

When the advantages of the possession and of
the project are on a par, there is no motive for
a change. But in the present case, perhaps they
are not upon a par, and the difference is in favour
of the possession. It docs not appear to me, that
the expenses of those whom you are going to expel,
do, in fact, take a course so directly and so generally
leading to vitiate and degrade anil render miserable
those through whom they pass, as the expenses
of those favourites whom you are intruding into
their houses. Why should the expenditure of a
great landed property, which is a dispersion of the
surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to
yTou or to me. when it takes its course through the
accumulation of vast libraries, which are the history
of the force and weakness of the human mind :
through great collections of ancient records, medals,
and coins, which attest and explain laws and customs;
through paintings and statues, that, by imitating
nature, seem to extend the limits of creation;
through grand monuments of the dead, which
continue the regards and connexions of lite beyond

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 221

the grave; through collections of the specimens
of nature, which become a representative assembly
of all the classes and families of the world, that by
disposition facilitate, and, by exciting curiosity, open
the avenues to science? If by great permanent
establishments, all these objects of expense are
better secured from the inconstant sport of personal
caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse
than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered in-
dividuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and
carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat
of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously,
in the construction and repair of the majestic edifices
of religion, as in the painted booths and sordid sties
of vice and luxury ; as honourably and as profitably
in repairing those sacred works, which grow hoary
with innumerable years, as on the momentary recep-
tacles of transient voluptuousness ; in opera-houses,
and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses,
and obelisks in the Champ de Mars ? Is the surplus
product of the olive and the vine worse employed
in the frugal sustenance of persons, whom the fictions
of a pious imagination raise to dignity by construing
in the service of God, than in pampering the innu-
merable multitude of those who are degraded by
being made useless domestics, subservient to the
pride of man ? Are the decorations of temples an
expenditure less worthy a wise man, than ribbons,
and laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons,
and petit soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies
and follies in which opulence sports away the burthen
of its superfluity ?

We tolerate even these; not from love of them,

-■LJ. REFLECTIONS ON Till

but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because ^
property and liberty, to a degree, require that
toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely,
in every point of view, the more laudable use of
estates? Why, through the violation of all property,
through an outrage upon every principle of liberty,
forcibly carry them from the better to the worse?

This comparison between the new individuals
and the old corps is made upon a supposition that
no reform could be jnade in the latter. But in a
question of reformation, I always consider corporate
bodies, whether sole or consisting of many, to be
much more susceptible of a public direction by the
power of the state, in the use of their property, and
in the regulation of modes and babits of life in their
members, than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps
ought to be : and this seems to me a very material
consideration for those who undertake any thing
which merits the name of a politic enterprise — So
far as to the estates of monasteries.

With regard to the estates possessed by bishops
and canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot
find out for what reason some landed estates may
not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can
any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate
the positive or the comparative evil of having a
certain, and that too a large portion of landed pro-
perty, passing in succession through persons whose
title to it is, always in theory, and often in fact,
an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning ;
a property which, by its destination, in their turn,
and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest
families renovation and support, to the lowest the

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 223

means of dignity and elevation ; a property, the
tenure of which is the performance of some duty,
(whatever value you may choose to set upon that
duty,) and the character of whose proprietors demands
at least an exterior decorum and gravity of manners;
who are to exercise a generous but temperate hos-
pitality ; part of whose income they are to consider
as a trust for charity ; and who, even when they fail
in their trust, when they slide from their character,
and degenerate into a mere common secular noble-
man or gentleman, are in no respect worse than
i those who may succeed them in their forfeited
e| possessions ? Is it better that estates should be
held by those who have no duty, than by those
who have one? — by those whose character and
destination point to virtues, than by those who
have no rule and direction in the expenditure of
their estates but their own will and appetite ? Nor
are these estates held altogether in the character
or with the evils supposed inherent in mortmain.
They pass from hand to hand with a more rapid
circulation than any other. No excess is good ;
and therefore too great a proportion of landed
property may be held officially for life : but it does
not seem to me of material injury to any common-
wealth, that there should exist some estates that
have a chance of being acquired by other means
than the previous acquisition of money.

This letter is grown to a great length, though it
is indeed short with regard to the infinite extent of
the subject. Various avocations have from time to
time called my mind from the subject. I was not
sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether, in

224 REFLECTIONS ON THE

the proceedings of the National Assembly, I might '
not find reasons to change or to qualify some of
my first sentiments. Every thing has confirmed
me more strongly in my first opinions. It was un-
original purpose to take a view of the principles
of the National Assembly with regard to the great
and fundamental establishments ; and to compare
the whole of what you have substituted in the place
of what you have destroyed, with the several mem-
bers of our British constitution. But this plan is
of greater extent than at first I computed, and I
find that you have little desire to take the advantage
of any examples. At present I must content myself
with some remarks upon your establishments ; re-
serving for another time wbat I proposed to say
concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aris-
tocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist.

I have taken a view of what has been done by
the governing power in France. I have certainly
spoke of it with freedom. Those whose principle
it is to despise the ancient permanent sense of man-
kind, and to set up a scheme of society on new-
principles, must naturally expect that such of us
who think better of the judgment of the human
race than of theirs, should consider both them and
their devices, as men and schemes upon their trial.
They must take it for granted that we attend much
to their reason, but not at all to their authority.
They have not one of the great influencing pre-
judices of mankind in their favour. They avow
their hostility to opinion. Of course they must
expect no support from that influence, which, with
every other authority, they have deposed from the
seal of its jurisdiction.

REVOLUTION IN FKANCE. 225

I can never consider this Assembly as any thing
else than a voluntary association of men, who have
availed themselves of circumstances to seize upon
the power of the state. They have not the sanction
and authority of the character under which they
first met. They have assumed another of a very
different nature ; and have completely altered and
inverted all the relations in which they originally
stood. They do not hold the authority they
exercise under any constitutional law of the
state.. They have departed from the instructions
of the people by whom they were sent ; which
instructions, as the Assembly did not act in virtue
of any ancient usage or settled law, were the sole
source of their authority. The most considerable
of their acts have not been done by great majorities ;
and in this sort of near divisions, which carry only
the constructive authority of the whole, strangers
will consider reasons as well as resolutions.

If they had set up this new experimental govern-
ment as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyran-
ny, mankind would anticipate the time of prescription,
which, through long usage, mellows into legality
governments that were violent in their commence-
ment. All those who have affections which lead
them to the conservation of civil order would recog-
nize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which
has been produced from those principles of cogent
expediency to which all just governments owe their
birth, and on which they justify their continuance.
■ But they will be late and reluctant in giving any sort
lb of countenance to the operations of a power, which
4 has derived its birth from no law and no necessity ;

226 REFLECTIONS ON THE

but which on the contrary has had its origin in thos<
vices and sinister practices by which the social unior
is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed. Tin:
Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. W<
have their own word for it that they have made I
revolution. To make a revolution is a measun
which, prima fronte, requires an apology. To maki
a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of ou
country; and no common reasons are called for t<
justify so violent a proceeding. The sense of man
kind authorizes us to examine into the mode o
acquiring new power, and to criticise on the us<
that is made of it, with less awe and reverence thai
that which is usually conceded to a settled and re
cognized authority.

In obtaining and securing their power, the As
sembly proceeds upon principles the most opposit
to those which appear to direct them in the us
of it. An observation on this difference will let u
into the true spirit of their conduct. Every thiiij
which they have done, or continue to do, in orde
to obtain and keep their power, is by the most com
mon arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestor
of ambition have done before them. Trace thet:
through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, yoi
can find nothing at all that is new. They folkn
precedents and examples with the punctilious exact
ness of a pleader. They never depart an iota fror
the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation
But in all the regulations relative to the publi
good, the spirit has been the very reverse of thli
There they commit the whole to the mercy of un
tried speculations ; they abandon the dearest interest

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 227

>f the public to those loose theories to which none
if them would choose to trust the slightest of his
>rivate concerns. They make this difference, be-
cause in their desire of obtaining and securing power
hey are thoroughly in earnest ; there they travel
n the beaten road. The public interests, because
ibout them they have no real solicitude, they
ibandon wholly to chance : I say to chance, because
heir schemes have nothing in experience to prove
heir tendency beneficial.

We must always see with a pity not unmixed with
espect, the errors of those who are timid and doubt-
ul of themselves with regard to points wherein the
lappiness of mankind is concerned. But in these
gentlemen there is nothing of the tender parental
olicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the
sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their
>romises, and the confidence of their predictions,
hey far outdo all the boasting of empirics. The
irrogance of their pretensions, in a manner provokes
ind challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation.

I am convinced that there are men of considerable
)arts among the popular leaders in the , National
Assembly. Some of them display eloquence in
heir speeches and their writings. This cannot be
without powerful and cultivated talents. But elo-
pjence may exist without a proportionable degree
)f wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged
;o distinguish. What they have done towards the
support of their system bespeaks no ordinary men.
[n the system itself, taken as the scheme of a re-
public constructed for procuring the prosperity and
ecurity of the citizen, and for promoting the strength

228 REFLECTIONS ON THE

and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable
to find out any thing which displays, in a single
instance, the work of a comprehensive and disposing
mind, or even the provisions of a vulgar prudence.
Their purpose every where seems to have been to
evade and slip aside from difficulty. This it has
been the glory of the great masters in all the arts
to confront, and to overcome; and when they had
overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an in-
strument for new conquests over new difficulties ;
thus to enable them' to extend the empire of their
science ; and even to push forward, beyond the reach
of their original thoughts, the land-marks of the
human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe
instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of
a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us
better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better
too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam
voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens (un-
nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is
our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty
obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our
object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations.
It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want
of nerves of understanding for such a task ; it is the
degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and little
fallacious facilities, that lias in SO many parts of the
world created governments with arbitrary powers.
They have created the late-arbitrary monarchy of
France. They have created the arbitrary republic
of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be
supplied by the plenitude of force. They get
nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 229

j principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of

slothful men. The difficulties, which they rather

1 had eluded than escaped, meet them again in their

1 course ; they multiply and thicken on them ; they
are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail,
in an industry without limit, and without direction ;
and, in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes
feeble, vicious, and insecure.

It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which
has obliged the arbitrary Assembly of France to
commence their schemes of reform with abolition
and total destruction.* But is it in destroying and
pulling down that skill is displayed ? Your mob can
do this as well at least as your assemblies. The
shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more
than equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull
down more in half an hour, than prudence, delibera-
tion, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.
The errors and defects of old establishments are,
visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to
point them out ; and where absolute power is given,
it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice
and the establishment together. The same lazy but
restless disposition, which loves sloth and hates

* A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaucl tie St. Etienne,
has expressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as pos-
sible— nothing can be more simple: — " Tous les etablissemens en
France couronnent le malhcur du peuple : pour le rendre heureux
il faut le renouveler ; changer ses idees ; changer ses loix ; changer

ses mceurs; changer les homines ; changer les choses ; changer

les mots tout detruire — oui, tout detruire; puisque tout est

a recreer." This gentleman was chosen president in an assembly
not sitting at Qitinze-vingt, or the Pe/its Maitont; and composed of
persons giving themselves out to he rational beings ; but neither his
ideas, language, nor conduct, differ in the smallest degree from the
discourses, opinions, and actions of those within and without the
Assembly, who direct the operations of the machine now at work in
France.

230 REFLECTIONS ON THE

quiet, directs these politicians, when they come to
work, for supplying the place of what they have
destroyed. To make every thing the reverse of
what they have seen is quite as easy as to destroy.
No difficulties occur in what has never been tried.
Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects
of what has not existed ; and eager enthusiasm, and
cheating hope, have all the wide field of imagination
in which they may expatiate with little or no
opposition.

At once to preserve and to reform is quite another
thing. When the useful parts of an old establish-
ment are kept, and what is superadded is to be
fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady
persevering attention, various powers of comparison
and combination, and the resources of an under-
standing fruitful in expedients, are to be exercised ;
they are to be exercised in a continued conflict with
the combined force of opposite vices, with the
obstinacy that rejects all improvement, and the levity
that is fatigued and disgusted with every thing of
which it is in possession. But you may object; —
" A process of this kind is slow. It is not fit for
an assembly, which glories in performing in a few
months the work of ages. Such a mode of reform-
ing, possibly, might take up many years." Without
question it might ; and it ought. It is one of the
excellences of a method in which time is amongst
the assistants, that its operation is slow, and in some
cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and
caution are a part of wisdom, when we work only
upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part
of duty too, when the subject of our demolition and

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 231

construction is not brick and timber, but sentient
beings, by the sudden alteration of whose state,
condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered
miserable. But it seems as if it were the prevalent
opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart, and an
undoubting confidence, are the sole qualifications
for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas
of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to
have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love
and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be
allowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate
object with an intuitive glance ; but his movements
towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrange-
ment, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only
wrought by social means. There mind must con-
spire with mind. Time is required to produce that
union of minds which alone can produce all the good
we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than
our force. If I might venture to appeal to what is
so much out of fashion in Paris, I mean to expe-
rience, I should tell you, that in my course I have
known, and, according to my measure, have co-
operated with great men ; and I have never yet seen
any plan which has not been mended by the observa-
tions of those who were much inferior in understand-
ing to the person who took the lead in the business.
By a slow but well-sustained progress, the effect of
each step is watched ; the good or ill success of the
first gives light to us in the second ; and so, from
fight to light, we are conducted with safety through
the whole series. We see that the parts of the
system do not clash. The evils latent in the most
promising contrivances are provided for as they arise.

232 REFLECTIONS OX THE

One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to
another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance.
We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the
various anomalies and contending principles that are
found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence
arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far
superior, an excellence in composition. Where the
great interests of mankind are concerned through
a long succession of generations, that succession
ought to be admitted into some share in the councils
which are so deeply to affect them. If justice re-
quires this, the work itself requires the aid of more
minds than one age can furnish. It is from this
view of things that the best legislators have been
often satisfied with the establishment of some sure,
solid, and ruling principle in government; a power
like that which some of the philosophers have called
a plastic nature ; and having fixed the principle, they
have left it afterwards to its own operation.

To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed
with a presiding principle, and a prolific energy, is
with me the criterion of profound wisdom. What
your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy
genius, are only proofs of a deplorable want of
ability. By their violent haste, and their defiance
of the process of nature, they are delivered over
blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every
alchemist and empiric. They despair of turning to
account any thing that is common. Diet is nothing
in their system of remedy. The worst of it is, that
this their despair of curing common distempers by
regular methods, arises not only from defect of com-
prehension, but, I fear, from some malignity of dis-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 233

position. Your legislators seem to have taken their
opinions of all professions, ranks, and offices, from
the declamations and buffooneries of satirists ; who
would themselves be astonished if they were held to
the letter of their own descriptions. By listening only
to these, your leaders regard all things only on the
side of their vices and faults, and view those vices
and faults under every colour of exaggeration. It is
undoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical,
but in general, those who are habitually employed in
finding and displaying faults, are unqualified for the
work of reformation : because their minds are not
only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good,
but by habit they come to take no delight in the
contemplation of those things. By hating vices too
much, they come to love men too little. It is
therefore not wonderful that they should be indis-
posed and unable to serve them. From hence arises
the complexional disposition of some of your guides
to pull every thing in pieces. At this malicious
game they display the whole of their quadrimanous
activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent
writers, brought forth purely as a sport of fancy, to
try their talents, to rouse attention, and excite sur-
prise, are taken up by these gentlemen, not in the
spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating
their taste and improving their style. These para-
doxes become with them serious grounds of action,
upon which they proceed in regulating the most
important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously
describes Cato as endeavouring to act in the com-
monwealth upon the school paradoxes which exer-
cised the wits of the junior students in the Stoic

x 3

-'M REFLECTIONS ON THE

philosophy. It' this was true of Cato, these gentle-
men copy after him in tin- manner of some persons
who lived about his time — utile muln Cnfnnntt.
Mr. Hume told me, that he had from Rousseau
himself the secret of his principles of composition.
Tint acute, though eccentric, observer had per-
ceived, that to strike and interest the public, the
marvellous must be produced ; that the marvellous
of the heathen mythology had long since lost its
effects ; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of
romance which succeeded, had exhausted the portion
of credulity which belonged to their age ; that now
nothing was left to a writer but that species of the
marvellous which might still be produced, and with
as great an effect as ever, though in another way \
that is. the marvellous in life, in manners, in charac-
ters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to
new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals.
I believe that, were Rousseau alive, and in one of
his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the
practical frenzy of his scholars, who in their para-
doxes are servile imitators, and even in their incre-
dulity discover an implicit faith.

Men who undertake considerable things, even in
a regular way. ought to give us ground to presume
ability. But the physician- of the state, who, not
satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to
regenerate constitutions, ought to shew uncommon
powers. Some very unusual appearances of wisdom
ought to display themselves on the face of the designs
of those who appeal to no practice, and who copy
after no model. Has any such been manifested?
I shall take a view (it shall for the subject be a very

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 235

short one) of what the Assembly has done, with
regard, first, to the constitution of the legislature ;
in the next place, to that of the executive power ;
then to that of the judicature; afterwards to the
model of the army ; and conclude with the system
of finance ; to see whether we can discover in any
part of their schemes the portentous ability which
may justify these bold undertakers in the superiority
which they assume over mankind.

It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding
part of this new republic, that we should expect
their grand display. Here they were to prove their
title to their proud demands. For the plan itself at
large, and for the reasons on which it is grounded,
I refer to the journals of the Assembly of the 29th
of September, 1789, and to the subsequent proceed-
ings which have made any alterations in the plan.
So far as in a matter somewhat confused I can see
light, the system remains substantially as it has
been originally framed. My few remarks will be
such as regard its spirit, its tendency, and its fitness
for framing a popular commonwealth, which they
profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for which any
commonwealth, and particularly such a common-
wealth, is made. At the same time, I mean to
consider its consistency with itself and its own
principles.

Old establishments are tried by their effects. If
the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful,
we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good
from whence good is derived. In old establishments
various correctives have been found for their aber-
rations from theory. Indeed they are the results of

236 REFLECTIONS ON THE

various necessities and expediences. They are not
often constructed after any theory ; theories are
rather drawn from them. In them we often see
the end best obtained, where the means seem not
perfectly reconcileable to what we may fancy was
the original scheme. The means taught by expe-
rience may be better suited to political ends than
those contrived in the original project. They again
re-act upon the primitive constitution, and sometimes
improve the design itself, from which they seem to
have departed. I think all this might be curiously
exemplified in the British constitution. At worst,
the errors and deviations of every kind in reckoning
are found and computed, and the ship proceeds in
her course. This is the case of old establishments ;
but in a new and merely theoretic system, it is
expected that every contrivance shall appear, on
the face of it, to answer its ends ; especially where
the projectors are no way embarrassed with an
endeavour to accommodate the new building to an
old one, either in the walls or on the foundations.

The French builders, clearing away as mere rub-
bish whatever they found, and, like their ornamental
gardeners, forming every thing into an exact level,
propose to rest the whole local and general legislature
on three bases of three different kinds : one geo-
metrical, one arithmetical, and the third financial :
the first of which they call the basis of territory ;
the second, the basis of population ; and the third,
the basis of contribution. For the accomplishment
of the first of these purposes, they divide the area
of their country into eighty-three pieces, regularly
square, of eighteen leagues by eighteen. These

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 237

large divisions are called Departments. These they
portion, proceeding by square measurement, into
seventeen hundred and twenty districts, called Com-
munes. These again they subdivide, still proceeding
by square measurement, into smaller districts called
Cantons, making in all 6,400.

At first view this geometrical basis of theirs pre-
sents not much to admire or to blame. It calls for
no great legislative talents. Nothing more than an
jj accurate land surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In
the old divisions of the country, various accidents
at various times, and the ebb and flow of various
properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds.
These bounds were not made upon any fixed system
undoubtedly. They were subject to some incon-
veniences ; but they were inconveniences for which
use had found remedies, and habit had supplied
accommodation and patience. In this new pavement
of square within square, and this organization and
semiorganization made on the system of Empedocles
and Buffon, and not upon any politic principle, it is
impossible that innumerable local inconveniencies,
to which men are not habituated, must not arise.
But these I pass over, because it requires an accurate
knowledge of the country, which I do not possess, to
specify them.

When these state surveyors came to take a view
of their work of measurement, they soon found
that in politics, the most fallacious of all things
was geometrical demonstration. They had then
recourse to another basis (or rather buttress) to
support the building which tottered on that false

238 REFLECTIONS ON THE

foundation. It was evident that the goodness of
the soil, the number of the people, their wealth,
and the largeness of their contribution, made such
infinite variations between square and square, as to
render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power
in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry
the most unequal of all measures in the distribution
of men. However, they could not give it up. But
dividing their political and civil representation into
three parts, they allotted one of those parts to
the square measurement, without a single fact or
calculation to ascertain whether this territorial pro-
portion of representation was fairly assigned, and
ought upon any principle really to be a third.
Having however given to geometry this portion
(of a third for her dower), out of compliment I
suppose to that sublime science, they left the other
two to be scuffled for between the other parts, popu-
lation and contribution.

When they came to provide for population, they
were not able to proceed quite so smoothly as they
had done in the field of their geometry. Here
their arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical
metaphysics. Had they stuck to their metaphysic
principles, the arithmetical process would be simple
indeed. Men, with them, are strictly equal, and
are entitled to equal rights in their own government.
Each head, on this system, would have its vote, and
every man would vote directly for the person who
was to represent him in the legislature. " But soft
— by regular degrees, not yet." This metaphysic
principle, to which law. custom, usage, policy.
reason, were to yield, is to vield itself to their

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 239

pleasure. There must be many degrees, and some
stages, before the representative can come in contact
with his constituent. Indeed, as we shall soon see,
these two persons are to have no sort of communion
with each other. First, the voters in the Canton,
who compose what they call primary assemblies, are
to have a qualification. What ! a qualification on
the indefeasible rights of men ? Yes ; but it shall be
a very small qualification. Our injustice shall be
very little oppressive ; only the local valuation of
three days' labour paid to the public. Why, this
is not much, I readily admit, for any thing but the
utter subversion of your equalizing principle. As
a qualification it might as well be let alone ; for it
answers no one purpose for which qualifications are
established : and, on your ideas, it excludes from
a vote the man of all others whose natural equality
stands the most in need of protection and defence ;
I mean the man who has nothing else but his natural
equality to guard him. You order him to buy the
right, which you before told him nature had given
to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no
authority on earth could lawfully deprive him.
With regard to the person who cannot come up
to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against
him, is established at the very outset, by you who
pretend to be its sworn foe.

The gradation proceeds. These primary assem-
blies of the Canton elect deputies to the Commune ;
one for every two hundred qualified inhabitants.
Here is the first medium put between the primary
elector and the representative legislator ; and here
a new turnpike is fixed for taxing the rights of men

"240 REFLECTIONS ON Till'.

with a second qualification : for none can be elected
into the Commune who does not pay the amount

of ten days' labour. Nor have we yet done. There
is still to be another gradation.* These Communes,
chosen by the Canton, choose to the Departmt nt ,
and the deputies of the Department choose then*
deputies to the National Assembly. Here is a third
barrier of a senseless qualification. Every deputy
to the National Assembly must pay, in direct contri-
bution, to the value of a mark of silver. Of all
these qualifying barriers we must think alike — that
they are impotent to secure independence; strong
only to destroy the rights of men.

In all this process, which in its fundamental
elements affects to consider only population upon
a principle of natural right, there is a manifest
attention to property; which, however just and
reasonable on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly
unsupportable.

When they come to their third basis, that of
Contribution, we rind that they have more com-
pletely lost sight of the rights of men. This last
basis rests entirely on property. A principle totally
different from the equality of men, and utterly
irreconcileable to it, is thereby admitted ; but no
sooner is this principle admitted, than (as usual) it

• The Assembly, in executing the plan of their committee, made
some alterations. They have struck out one stage in these gradation* ;
this removes a part of the objection : but the main objection, namely.
that in their scheme the first constituent voter has no connexion with
the representative legislator, remains in all its force. There are
other alterations, some possibly for the better, some certainly for the
worse: but to the author the merit or demerit of these smaller
alterations appears to be of no moment, where the scheme itself is
fundamentally vicious and absurd.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 241

is subverted ; and it is not subverted (as we shall
presently see) to approximate the inequality of
riches to the level of nature. The additional share
in the third portion of representation (a portion
reserved exclusively for the higher contribution)
is made to regard the district only, and not the
individuals in it who pay. It is easy to perceive,
by the course of their reasonings, how much they
were embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of
the rights of men and the privileges of riches. The
committee of constitution do as good as admit that
they are wholly irreconcileable. " The relation
ffith' regard to the contributions, is without doubt
null (say they) when the question is on the balance
of the political rights as between individual and
individual; without which personal equality would be
destroyed, and an aristocracy of the rich would be es-
tablished. But this inconvenience entirely disappears
when the proportional relation of the contribution is
only considered in the great masses, and is solely
between province and province : it serves in that
case only to form a just reciprocal proportion be-
tween the cities, without affecting the personal
rights of the citizens."

Here the principle of contribution, as taken be-
tween man and man, is reprobated as null, and
destructive to equality ; and as pernicious too ; be-
cause it leads to the establishment of an aristocracy
of the rich. However, it must not be abandoned.
And the way of getting rid of the difficulty is to
establish the inequality as between department and
department, leaving all the individuals in each de-
partment upon an exact par. Observe that this

242 REFLECTIONS ON THE

parity between individuals had been before destroyed
when the qualifications within the departments were
settled ; nor does it seem a matter of great import-
ance whether the equality of men be injured by
masses or individually. An individual is not of the
same importance in a mass represented by a few,
as in a mass represented by many. It would be too
much to tell a man jealous of his equality, that the
elector has the same franchise who votes for three
members as he who votes for ten.

Now take it in the other point of view, and let us
suppose their principle of representation according to
contribution, that is, according to riches, to be well
imagined, and to be a necessary basis for their repub-
lic, how have they provided for the rich by giving to
the district, that is to say, to the poor Hi the district
of Canton and Commune, who are the majority, the
power of making an additional number of members on
account of the superior contribution of the wealthy?
Suppose one man (it is an easy supposition) to con-
tribute ten times more than ten of his neighbours.
For this contribution he has one vote out of ten.
The poor out-vote him by nine voices in virtue of
his superior contribution, for (say) ten members,
instead of out-voting him for only one member.
Why are the rich complimented with an aristocratic
preference, which they can never feel either as a
gratification to pride, or as a security to fortune?
The rich indeed require an additional security from
the dangers to which they are exposed when a
popular power is prevalent ; but it is impossible to
divine, on this system of unequal masses, how they
are protected ; because the aristocratic mass is gene-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 243

rated from democratic principles ; and the prevalence
in the general representation has no sort of connec-
tion with those on account of whose property this
superiority is given. If the contrivers of this scheme
meant any sort of favour to the rich in consequence of
their contribution, they ought to have conferred the
privilege either on the individual rich, or on some
class formed of rich persons ; because the contest
between the rich and the poor is not a struggle
between corporation and corporation, but a contest
between men and men ; a competition not between
districts, but between descriptions. It would answer
! its purpose better if the scheme were inverted ; that
I the votes of the masses were rendered equal ; and
d! that the votes within each mass were proportioned
to property. In any other light, I see nothing but
danger from the inequality of the masses.

If indeed the masses were to provide for the ge-
neral treasury by distinct contingents, and that the
revenue had not (as it has) many impositions running
through the whole, which affect men individually,
and not corporately, and which, by their nature,
confound all territorial limits, something might be
said for the basis of contribution as founded on
masses. But of all things, this representation, to be
measured by contribution, is the most difficult to
settle upon principles of equity, in a country which
considers its districts as members of a whole. For
a great city, such as Bourdeaux or Paris, appears to
pay a vast body of duties, almost out of all assignable
proportion to other places, and its mass is considered
accordingly. But are these cities the true contri-
butors in that proportion ? No. The consumers of

244 REFLECTIONS ON TlIT

the commodities imported into Bourdeaux, who are
scattered through all France, pay the import duties
of Bourdeaux. The produce of the vintage in
Guienne and Languedoc gives to that city the means
of its contribution growing out of an export com-
merce. The landholders who spend their estates
in Paris, and are thereby the creators of that city,
contribute for Paris from the provinces out of which
their revenues arise.

If in equity this basis of contribution, as locally
ascertained by masses, be inequitable, it is impolitic
too. If it be one of the objects to preserve the weak
from being crushed by the strong, (as in all society
undoubtedly it is,) bow are the smaller and poorer
of these masses to be saved from the tyranny of the
more wealthy? Is it by adding to their means of
oppressing them ? When we come to a balance of
representation between corporate bodies, provincial
interests, emulations, and jealousies, are full as likely
to arise among them as among individuals; and their
divisions are likely to produce much hotter dissen-
sions, and something leading much more nearly to
a war.

To compare together the three bases, not on their
political reason, but on the ideas on which the
Assembly works, and to try its consistency with
itself, we cannot avoid observing, that the principle
which the committee call the basis of population,
does not begin to operate from the same point with
the two other principles called the bases of territory
and of contribution, winch are both of an aristocratic
nature. The consequence i-. that where all three
begin to operate together, there i< the most absurd

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 245

inequality produced by the operation of the former
on the two latter principles. Every canton contains
four square leagues, and is estimated to contain, on
the average, 4,000 inhabitants, or 680 voters in the
primary assemblies, which vary in numbers with the
population of the canton, and send one deputy to the
commune for every 200 voters. Nine cantons make
a commune.

Now let us take a canton containing a sea-port
town of trade, or a great manufacturing town. Let
us suppose the population of this canton to be
12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters, forming three
primary assemblies, and sending ten deputies to the
commune.

Oppose to this one canton two others of the re-
maining eight in the same commune. These we
may suppose to have their fair population of 4,000
inhabitants, and 680 voters each, or 8,000 inhabitants
and 1,360 voters, both together. These will form
only two primary assemblies, and send only six
deputies to the commune.

When the assembly of the commune comes to
vote on the basis of territory, which principle is first
admitted to operate in that assembly, the single
canton which has half the territory of the other
two, will have ten voices to six in the election of
three deputies to the assembly of the department,
chosen on the express ground of a representation of
territory.

This inequality, striking as it is, will be yet highly
aggravated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the
severed other cantons of the commune to fall propor-
tionably short of the average population, as much as

\-3

24G REFLECTIONS ON THE

the principal canton exceeds it. Now, as to the
basis of contribution, which also is a principle ad-
mitted first to operate in the assembly of the com-
mune. Let us again take one canton, such as is
stated above. If the whole of the direct contribu-
tions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town
be divided equally among the inhabitants, each indi-
vidual will be found to pay much more than an
individual living in the country according to the
same average. The whole paid by the inhabitants
of the former will be more than the whole paid by
the inhabitants of the latter — we may fairly assume
one-third more. Then the 12,700 inhabitants, or
2,193 voters of the canton, will pay as much as 19,050
inhabitants, or 3,289 voters of the other cantons,
which are nearly the estimated proportion of inhabi-
tants and voters of five other cantons. Now the
2,193 voters will, as I before said, send only ten
deputies to the assembly; the 3,289 voters will send
sixteen. Thus, for an equal share in the contribution
of the whole commune, there will be a difference of
sixteen voices to ten in voting for deputies to be
chosen on the principle of representing the general
contribution of the whole commune.

By the same mode of computation we shall find
15,875 inhabitants, or 2,74-1 voters of the other
cantons, who pay one-sixth LESS to the contribution
of the whole commune, will have three voices KOBE
than the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of tbe
one canton.

Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality be-
tween max and mass, in this curious repartition of
the right- of representation arising oul of territory

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 1247

and contribution. The qualifications which these
confer are in truth negative qualifications, that give
a right in an inverse proportion to the possession of
them.

In this whole contrivance of the three bases, con-
sider it in any light you please, I do not see a variety
of objects reconciled in one consistent whole, but
several contradictory principles reluctantly and irre-
concileably brought and held together by your
philosophers, like wild beasts shut up in a cage,
to claw and bite each other to their mutual de-
struction.

I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of
considering the formation of a constitution. They
have much, but bad, metaphysics ; much, but bad,
geometry ; much, but false proportionate arithmetic;
but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry,
and arithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes
were perfectly consistent in all their parts, it would-
make only a more fair and sightly vision. It is
remarkable, that in a great arrangement of mankind,
not one reference whatsover is to be found to any
thing moral or any thing politic ; nothing that relates
to the concerns, the actions, the passions, the in-
terests of men. Hominem n-on sapiunt.

You see I only consider this constitution as elec-
;oral, and leading by steps to the National Assembly.
I do not enter into the internal government of the
lepartments, and their genealogy through the com-
nunes and cantons. These local governments are,
n the original plan, to be as nearly as possible
Bmposed in the same manner and on the same
Rinciples will) the elective assemblies. They are

'248 it 1.1 1.1. ( lln\> uN Tilt

each of them hodies perfectly compact and rounded
in themselves.

You cannot hut perceive in this scheme, that it
has a direct and immediate tendency to sever France
into a variety of republics, and to render them totally
independent <>f each other, without any direct con-
stitutional means of coherence, connexion, or sub-
ordination, except what may be derived from their
acquiescence in the determinations of the general
congress of the ambassadors from each independent
republic. Such in re"ality is the National Assem-
bly, and such governments I admit do exist in the
world, though in forms infinitely more suitable to
the local and habitual circumstances of their people.
But such associations, rather than bodies politic,
have generally been the effect of necessity, not
choice ; and I believe the present French power is
the very first body of citizens, who, having obtained
full authority to do with their country what they
pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous
manner.

It is impossible not to observe, that, in the spirit
of this geometrical distribution, and arithmetical
arrangement, these pretended citizens treat France
exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as
conquerors, they have imitated the policy of the
harshest of that harsh race. The policy of such
barbarous victors, who contemn a subdued people,
and insult their feelings, has ever been, as much as
in them lay, to destroy all vestiges of the ancient
country, in religion, in polity, in laws, and in man-
ners; to confound all territorial limits; to produce
i general poverty ; to put up their properties to

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 249

auction ; to crush their princes, nobles, and pontiffs ;
to lay low every thing which had lifted its head
above the level, or which could serve to combine
or rally, in their distresses, the disbanded people,
under the standard of old opinion. They have
made France free in the manner in which those
sincere friends to.the rights of mankind, the Romans,
freed Greece, Macedon, and other nations. They
destroyed the bonds of their union, under colour
of providing for the independence of each of their
cities.

When the members who compose these new bodies
of cantons, communes, and departments — arrange-
ments purposely produced through the medium of
confusion — begin to act, they will find themselves,
in a great measure, strangers to one another. The
electors and elected throughout, especially in the
rural cantons, will be frequently without any civil
habitudes or connexions, or any of that natuiul
discipline which is the soul of a true republic.
Magistrates and collectors of revenue are now no
longer acquainted with their districts, bishops with
their dioceses, or curates with their parishes. These
new colonies of the rights of men bear a strong
resemblance to that sort of military colonies which
Tacitus has observed upon in the declining policy
of Rome. In better and wiser days (whatever course
they took with foreign nations) they were careful
to make the elements of a methodical subordination
and settlement to be coeval ; and even to lay the
foundations of discipline in the military.* But,

• Non, ut olim, universa; Icgiones deducobantur cum tributiis. p(
ccnturionibus, et sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu el

^JU REFLECTIONS ON THE

when all the good arts had fallen into ruin, they
proceeded, as your Assembly does, upon the equality
of men, and with as little judgment, and as little
care for those things which make a republic tolerable
or durable. But in this, as well as almost every
instance, your new commonwealth is born, and bred,
and fed, in those corruptions which mark degenerated
and worn-out republics. Your child comes into the
world with the symptoms of death ; the ja< iis
Hippoaritica forms the character of its physiognomy,
and the prognostic of its fate.

The legislators who framed the ancient republics,
knew that their business was too arduous to be
accomplished with no better apparatus than the
metaphysics of an undergraduate, and the mathe-
matics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had
to do with men, and they were obliged to study
human nature. They had to do with citizens, and
they were obliged to study the effects of those habits
which are communicated by the circumstances of
civil life. They were sensible that the operation
of this second nature on the first produced a new
combination ; and thence arose many diversities
amongst men, according to their birth, their edu-
cation, their professions, the periods of their lives,
their residence in towns or in the country, their
several ways of acquiring and of fixing property,
and according to the quality of the property itself,

rempublicam aflicerent : sed ignoti inter se, diversis mani-

pulis, sine rectore, sine alieetibus mutuis, quasi ex alio gencrc
mortalium, repente in unumcolleeti.mimerusmagisquamcolonia." —
Tac. Annul. 1. 11. sect. 27. All this will be still more applicable to

he unconnected, rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this

liiMird and senseless constitution

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 251

all which rendered them as it were so many different
species of animals. From hence they thought them-
selves obliged to dispose their citizens into such
classes, and to place them in such situations in the
state, as their peculiar habits might qualify them
to fill, and to allot to them such appropriated pri-
vileges as might secure to them what their specific
occasions required, and which might furnish to each
description such force as might protect it in the
conflict caused by the diversity of interests, that
must exist, and must contend in all complex society :
for the legislator would have been ashamed, that the
coarse husbandman should well know how to assort
and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should
have enough of common sense not to abstract and
equalize them all into animals, without providing for
each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment;
whilst he, the economist, disposer and shepherd of
his own kindered, subliming himself into an airy
metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his
flocks but as men in general. It is for this reason
that Montesquieu observed very justly, that in their
classification of the citizens, the great legislators of
antiquity made the greatest display of their powers,
and even soared above themselves. It is here that
your modern legislators have gone deep into the
negative series, and sunk even below their own
nothing. As the first sort of legislators attended to
the different kinds of citizens, and combined them
into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical
and alchemistical legislators, have taken the directly
contrary course. They have attempted to confound
all sorts of citizens, as well as they could, into one

252 REFLECTIONS ON 1 III

homogeneous mass; and then they divided this their
amalgama into a number of incoherent republics.
They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the
sake of simple telling, and not to figures whose
power is to arise from their place in the table.
The elements of their own metaphysics might have
taught them better lessons. The troll of their
categorical table might have informed them that
there was something else in the intellectual world
besides substance and quantity. They might learn
from the catechism of metaphysics, that there were
eight heads more,* in every complex deliberation,
which, they have never thought of, though these,
of all the ten, are the subjects on which the skill
of man can operate any tiling at all.

So far from this able disposition of some of
the old republican legislators, which follows with
a solicitous accuracy the moral conditions and pro-
pensities of men, they have levelled and crushed
together all the orders which they found, even
under the coarse unartificial arrangement of the
monarchy, in which modi- of government the class-
ing of the citizens is not of so much importance as
in a republic. It is true, however, that every such
classification, if properly ordered, is good in all
forms of government; and composes a strong barrier
against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is
the necessary means of giving effect and permanence
to a republic. For want of something of this kind,
if the present project of a republic should fail, all
securities to a moderated freedom fail along with it ;

► Qualitas, Relatio, Act us, Habitus.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 253

all the indirect restraints which mitigate despotism
are removed ; insomuch that if monarchy should
ever again obtain an entire ascendancy in France,
under this or under any other dynasty, it will
probably be, if not voluntarily tempered, at setting
out, by the wise and virtuous counsels of the prince,
the most completely arbitrary power that has ever
appeared on earth. This is to play a most desperate
game.

The confusion which attends on all such proceed-
ings, they even declare to be one of their objects, and
they hope to secure their constitution by a terror of
a return of those evils which attended their making
it. "By this," say they, "its destruction will
become difficult to authority, which cannot break
it up without the entire disorganisation of the whole
state." They presume, that if this authority should
ever come to the same degree of power that they
have acquired, it would make a more moderate and
chastised use of it, and would piously tremble
entirely to disorganise the state in the savage
manner that they have done. They expect, from
the virtues of returning despotism, the security
which is to be enjoyed by the offspring of their
popular vices.

I wish, Sir, that you and my readers would give
an attentive perusal to the work of M. de Calonne,
on this subject. It is indeed not only an eloquent
but an able and instructive performance. I confine
myself to what he says relative to the constitution
of the new state, and to the condition of the revenue.
As to the disputes of this minister with his rivals,
I do not wish to pronounce upon them. As little

7.

254 EEFLECTlONS on i HE

do I mean to hazard any opinion concerning his
ways and means, financial or political, for taking his
country out of its present disgraceful and deplorable
situation of servitude, anarchy, bankruptcy, and
beggary. I cannot speculate quite so sanguinely
as lie does: but he is a Frenchman, and lias a closer
duty relative to those objects, and better means of
judging of them, than I can have. I wish that the
forma] avowal which he refers to, made by one of
the principal leaders in the Assembly concerning
the tendency of their scheme to bring France not
only from a monarchy to a republic, but from a
republic to a mere confederacy, may be very
particularly attended to. It adds new force to
my observations; and indeed M. de Calonne's
work supplies my deficiencies by many new and
striking arguments on most of the subjects of this
letter.*

It is this resolution, to break their country into
separate republics, which has driven them into the
greatest number of their difficulties and contradic-
tions. If it were not for this, all the questions of
exact equality, and these balances, never to be settled,
of individual rights, population, and contribution,
would be wholly useless. The representation.
though derived from parts, would be a duty which
equally regarded the whole. Each deputy to the
Assembly would be the representative of France, and
of all its descriptions, of the many and of the few,
of the rich and of the poor, of the great districts and
of the small. All these districts would themselves

• Seel'Etat de la Trance ;

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 255

be subordinate to some standing authority, existing
independently of them ; an authority in which their
representation, and every thing that belongs to it,
originated, and to which it was pointed. This
standing, unalterable, fundamental government would
make, and it is the only thing which could make,
that territory truly and properly a whole. With
us, when we elect popular representatives, we send
them to a council, in which each man individually
is a subject, and submitted to a government complete
in all its ordinary functions. With you the elective
assembly is the sovereign, and the sole sovereign :
all the members are therefore integral parts of this
sole sovereignty. But with us it is totally different.
With us the representative, separated from the
other parts, can have no action and no existence.
The government is the point of reference of the
several members and districts of our representation.
This is the centre of our unity. This government
of reference is a trustee for the whole, and not for
the parts. So is the other branch of our public
council — I mean the house of lords. With us the
king and the lords are several and joint securities
for the equality of each district, each province, each
city. When did you hear in Great Britain of any
province suffering from the inequality of its repre-
sentation ; what district from having no representation
at all ? Not only our monarchy and our peerage
secure the equality on which our unity depends,
but it is the spirit of the house of commons itself.
The very inequality of representation, which is so
foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing
which prevents us from thinking or acting as mem-

2.JG REFLECTIONS ON" THE

bers for distriits. Cornwall elects as many members
as all Scotland. But is Cornwall better taken care
of tban Scotland ? Few trouble their heads about
any of your bases, out of some giddy clubs. Most
of those who wish for any change, upon any plausible
grounds, desire it on different ideas.

Your new constitution is tbe very reverse of ours
in its principle; and lam astonished how any per-
sons could dream of holding out any thing done in
it as an example for Great Britain. With you there
is little, or rather no; connexion between the last
representative and the first constituent. The member
who goes to the National Assembly is not chosen by
the people, nor accountable to them. There are
three elections before he is chosen : two sets of
magistracy intervene between him and the primary
assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an
ambassador of a state, and not the representative of
the people within a state. By this the whole spirit
of the election is changed; nor can any corrective
your constitution-mongers have devised render him
any thing else than what he is. The very attempt
to do it would inevitably introduce a confusion, if
possible, more horrid than the present. There is
no way to make a connexion between the original
constituent and the representative, but by the
circuitous means which may lead the candidate to
apply in the first instance to the primary electors,
in order that by their authoritative instructions (and
something more perhaps) these primary electors
may force the two succeeding bodies of electors
to make a choice agreeable to their wishes. But
this would plainly subvert the whole scheme. It

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 257

would be to plunge them back into that tumult and
confusion of popular election, which, by their in-
terposed gradation of elections, they mean to avoid,
and at length to risk the whole fortune of the
state with those who have the least knowledge of
it, and the least interest in it. This is a perpetual
dilemma, into which they are thrown by the vicious,
weak, and contradictory principles they have chosen.
Unless the people break up and level this gradation,
it is plain that they do not at all substantially elect
to the Assembly ; indeed they elect as little in
appearance as reality.

What is it we all seek for in an election? To
answer its real purposes, you must first possess the
means of knowing the fitness of your man ; and then
you must retain some hold upon him by personal
obligation or dependence. For what end are these
primary electors complimented, or rather mocked,
with a choice? They can never know any thing
of the qualities of him that is to serve them, nor
has he any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all
the powers unfit to be delegated by those who have
any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit
is what relates to a personal choice. In case of
abuse, that body of primary electors never can call
the representative to an account for his conduct.
He is too far removed from them in the chain of
representation. If he acts improperly at the end
of his two-years lease, it does not concern him for
two years more. By the new French constitution,
the best and the wisest representatives go equally
with the worst into this Limbus Patrum. Their
bottoms are supposed foul, and they must go into

2.58 REFLECTIONS ON THE

dock to be refitted. Every man who has served in
an assembly is ineligible for two years after. Just
as these magistrates begin to learn their trade, like
chimney-sweepers, they are disqualified for exercising
it. Superficial, new, petulant acquisition, and in-
terrupted, dronish, broken, ill recollection, is to be
the destined character of all your future governors.
Your constitution has too much of jealousy to have
much of sense in it. You consider the breach of
trust in the representative so principally, that you
do not at all regard the question of his fitness to
execute it.

This purgatory interval is not unfavourable to
a faithless representative, who may bo as good
a canvasser as he was a bad governor. In this
time he may cabal himself into a superiority over
the wisest and most virtuous. As, in the end, all
the members of this elective constitution are equally
fugitive, and exist only for the election, they may
be no longer the same persons who had chosen
him, to whom he is to be responsible when he
solicits for a renewal of his trust. To call all the
secondary electors of the Commune to account, is
ridiculous, impracticable, and unjust ; they may
themselves have been deceived in their choice, as
the third set of electors, those of the Department,
may be in theirs. In your elections responsibility
cannot exist.

Finding no sort of principle of coherence with
each other in the nature and constitution of the
several new republics of France, I considered what
cement the legislators had provided for them from
any extraneous materials. Their confederations.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. ^59

their spectacles, their civic feasts, and their en-
thusiasm, I take no notice of — they are nothing
but mere tricks; but tracing their policy through
their actions, I think I can distinguish the arrange-
ments by which they propose to hold these republics
together. The first, is the confiscation, with the
compulsory paper currency annexed to it ; the
second, is the supreme power of the city of Paris ;
the third, is the general army of the state. Of this
last I shall reserve what I have to say, until I come
to consider the army as a head by itself.

As to the operation of the first (the confiscation
and paper currency) merely as a cement, I cannot
deny that these, the one depending on the other,
may for some time compose some sort of cement,
if their madness and folly in the management, and
in the tempering of the parts together, does not
produce a repulsion in the very outset. But allowing
to the scheme some coherence and some duration,
it appears to me, that if, after a while, the confiscation
should not be found sufficient to support the paper
coinage, (as I am morally certain it will not,) then,
instead of cementing, it will add infinitely to the
dissociation, distraction, and confusion of these con-
federate republics, both with relation to each other,
and to the several parts within themselves. But if
the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink
the paper currency, the cement is gone with the
circulation. In the mean time its binding force
will be very uncertain, and it will straiten or relax
with every variation in the credit of the paper.

One thing only is certain in this scheme, which
is an effect seemingly collateral, but direct, I have

•2<i<» REFLECTIONS ON THE

no doubt, in the minds of those who conduct this
business; that is, its effect in producing an oligarchy
in every one of the republics. A paper circulation,
not founded on any real money deposited or engaged
for, amounting already to four-and-forty millions of
English money, and this currency by force sub-
stituted in the place of the coin of the kingdom,
becoming thereby the substance of its revenue, as
well as the medium of all its commercial and civil
intercourse, must put the whole of what power,
authority, and influence is left, in any form whatso-
ever it may assume, into the hands of the managers
and conductors of this circulation.

In England we feel the influence of the bank,
though it is only the centre of a voluntary dealing.
He knows little indeed of the influence of money
upon mankind, who does not see the force of the
management of a monied concern, which is so much
more extensive, and in its nature so much more
depending on the managers, than any of ours. But
if we take into consideration the other part essen-
tially connected with it, (which consists in continually
drawing out for sale portions of the confiscated
land, this continual exchanging land for paper, and
this mixing it into circulation,) we may conceive
something of the intensity of its operation. By this
means the spirit of money-jobbing and speculation
goes into the mass of land itself, and incorporates
with it. By this kind of operation, that specie- of
property becomes, as it were, volatilized; it assumes
an unnatural and monstrous activity, and thereby
throws into the hands of the several managers.
principal and subordinate, Parisian and provincial,

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 261

I all the representative of money, and perhaps a full
I tenth part of all the land in France, which has now
I acquired the worst and most pernicious part of the
I evil of a paper circulation, the greatest possible
I uncertainty in its value. They have reversed the
I Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos.
I They have sent theirs to be blown about, like the
light fragments of a wreck, oras et littora circum.

The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers,
and without any fixed habits or local predilections,
will purchase to job out again, as the market of
paper, or of money, or of land, shall present an
advantage. For though a holy bishop thinks that
agriculture will derive great advantages from the
" enlightened" usurers who are to purchase the church
confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old
farmer, with great humility beg leave to tell his late
lordship, that usury is not a tutor of agriculture ;
and if the word "enlightened" be understood ac-
cording to the new dictionary, as it always is in
your new schools, I cannot conceive how a man's
not believing in God can teach him to cultivate
the earth with the least of any additional skill or
encouragement. " Diis immortalibus sero," said an
old Roman, when he held one handle of the plough,
whilst Death held the other. Though you were to
join in the commission all the directors of the two
academies to the directors of the Cuisse d' Escompte,
one old experienced peasant is worth them all. I
have got more information upon a curious and
interesting branch of husbandry, in one short con-
versation with an old Carthusian monk, than I have
derived from all the Bank directors that 1 have ever

2G2 REFLECTIONS ON THE

conversed with. However, there is no cause for
apprehension from the meddling of money-dealers
with rural economy. These gentlemen are too
wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their
tender and susceptible imaginations may be capti-
vated with the innocent and unprofitable delights!
of a pastoral life; but in a little time they will find
that agriculture is a trade much more laborious, and
much less lucrative, than that which they had left.
After making its panegyric, they will turn theil
backs on it like their great precursor and prototype.
They may, like him, begin by singing " liccitas
ilk" — but what will be the end ?

"Hare cum locutus foenerator Alphius,
Jam jam futurus rusticus
Onmem relegit idibus jiecuniam;
Qurerit calendis ]>onere."

They will cultivate the Caisse d'Eglise, under the
sacred auspices and this prelate, with much more
profit than its vineyards and its corn-fields. They
will employ their talents according to their habits
and their interests. They will not follow the plough
whilst they can direct treasuries, and govern pro-
vinces.

Your legislators, in every thing new, are the
very first who have founded a commonwealth upon
gaming, and infused this spirit into it as its vital
breath. The great object in these politics is to
metamorphose Prance from a great kingdom into
one great play-table; to turn its inhabitants into
a nation of gamesters; to make speculation as ex-
tensive as life; to mix it with all its concerns;
and to divert tin' whole of the hopes and fearfi of

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 263

the people from their usual channels, into the im-
pulses, passions, and superstitions of those who live
on chances. They loudly proclaim their opinion,
that this their present system of a republic cannot
possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund ;
and that the very thread of its life is spun out of
the staple of these speculations. The old gaming
in funds was mischievous enough undoubtedly ;
but it was so only to individuals. Even when it
had its greatest extent, in the Mississippi and South
Sea, it affected but few, comparatively ; where it
extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit has but
,i single object. But by bringing the currency of
gaming into the minutest matters, and engaging
very body in it, and in every thing, a more dread-
ul epidemic distemper of that kind is spread than
yet has appeared in the world. With you a man
?an neither earn nor buy his dinner, without a spe-
ulation. What he receives in the morning will not ,
lave the same value at night. What he is compelled
o take as pay for an old debt, will not be received
is the same when he is to contract a new one ;
lor will it be the same when by prompt payment he
vould avoid contracting any debt at all. Industry
nust wither away. Economy must be driven from
^our country. Careful provision will have no ex-
istence. Who will labour without knowing the
mount of his pay ? Who will study to increase
vhat none can estimate ? Who will accumulate,
vhen he does not know the value of what he saves '?
f you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accu-
nulate your paper wealth, would be not the provi-

264 REFLECTIONS ON THE

deuce of a man but the distempered instinct of

a jackdaw ?

The truly melancholy part of the policy of syste-
matically making a nation of gamesters is this— that
though all are forced to play, few can understand
the game ; and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of that knowledge. The many must
be the dupes of the few who conduct the machine
of these speculations. What effect it must have on
the country-people is visible. The townsman can
calculate from day to day : not so the inhabitant
of the country. When the peasant first bring!
his corn to market, the magistrate in the towns
obliges him to take the assignat at pat ; when he
goes to the shop with this money, he finds it seven
per cent, the worse for crossing the way. This
market he will not readily resort to again. The
towns-people will be inflamed ; they will force the
country-people to bring their corn. Resistance will
begin, and the murders of Paris and St. Denis may
be renewed through all France.

What signifies the empty compliment paid to
the country, by giving it perhaps more than its share
in the theory of your representation ? Where have
you placed the real power over monied and landed
circulation ? Where have you placed the means
of raising and falling the value of every man's
freehold ? The whole of the power obtained by
this revolution will settle in the towns among the
burghers, and the monied directors who lead them.
The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant,
have, none of them, habits, or inclinations, or ex-j
perience, which can lead them to any share in this

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 265

the sole source of power and influence now left in
France. The very nature of a country life, the
very nature of landed property, in all the occupa-
tions, and all the pleasures they afford, render
combination and arrangement (the sole way of
procuring and exerting influence) in a manner im-
possible amongst country-people. Combine them
by all the art you. can, and all the industry, they are
always dissolving into individuality. Any thing in
the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable
amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the
ephemerous tale that does its business, and dies in
a day — all these things, which are the reins and
spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds
of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at
all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they
arm, they act with the utmost difficulty, and at the
greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can
be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot
proceed systematically. If the country gentlemen
attempt an influence through the mere income of
their property, what is it to that of those who have
ten times their income to sell, and who can ruin
their property by bringing their plunder to meet
it at market? If the landed man wishes to mortgage,
he falls the value of his land, and raises the value of
assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by
the very means he must take to contend with him.
The country gentleman therefore, the officer by sea
and land, the man of liberal views and habits,
attached to no profession, will be as completely
excluded from the government of his country as
if he were legislatively proscribed. It is obvious,

266 REFLECTION'S ON THE

that in the towns, all the things which conspire
against the country gentleman, combine in favour
of the money manager and director. In towns
combination is natural. The habits of burghers,
their occupations, their diversion, their business,
their idleness, continually bring them into mutual
contact. Their virtues and their vices are sociable ;
they are always in garrison ; and they come em-
bodied and half disciplined into the hands of those
who mean to form them for civil, or for military
action.

All these considerations leave no doubt on my
mind, that, if this monster of a constitution can
continue, France will be wholly governed by the
agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns
formed of directors of assignats, and tiustees for the
sale of church lands, attornies, agents, money-job-
bers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an
ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of
the crown, the church, the nobility, and the people.
Here end all the deceitful dreams and visions of
the equality and rights <>i men. In "the Serbonian
bog" of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed,
sunk, and lost for ever.

Though human eyes cannot trace them, one
would be tempted to think some great offences in
France must cry to heaven, which has thought
fit to punish it with a subjection to a vile and
inglorious domination, in which no comfort or
compensation is to be found in any even of
those false splendours, which, playing about other
tyrannies, prevent mankind from feeling themselves
dishonoured even whilst they are oppressed. I must

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 267

confess I am touched with a sorrow, mixed with
some indignation, at the conduct of a few men,
once of great rank, and still of great character, who,
deluded with specious names, have engaged in a
business too deep for the line of their understanding
to fathom ; who have lent their fair reputation,
and the authority of their high-sounding names,
to the designs of men with whom they could not
be acquainted ; and have thereby made their very
virtues operate to the ruin of their country.

So far as to the first cementing principle.

The second material of cement for their new
republic, is the superiority of the city of Paris : and
this I admit is strongly connected with the other
cementing principle of paper circulation and con-
fiscation. It is in this part of the project we must
look for the cause of the destruction of all the old
bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical
and secular, and the dissolution of all ancient
combinations of things, as well as the formation
of so many small unconnected republics. The
power of the city of Paris is evidently one great
spring of all their politics. It is through the
power of Paris, now become the centre and focus
of jobbing, that the leaders of this faction direct, or
rather command, the whole legislative and the whole
executive government. Every thing therefore must
be done which can confirm the authority of that
city over the other republics. Paris is compact ;
she has an enormous strength, wholly dispropor-
tioned to the force of any of the square republics -,
and this strength is collected and condensed within
a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy

268 REFLECTIONS ON THE

connexion of its parts, which will not be affected by
any scheme of a geometrical constitution, nor does it
much signify whether its proportion of representation
be more or less, since it has the whole draft of fishes
in its drag-net. The other divisions of the kingdom
being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from
all their habitual means, and even principles of
union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate
against her. It was plain that the new incorporation
of the city of Paris could not completely and
conclusively domineer over France in any other
way than by breaking, in every other part of it,
those connexions which might balance her power.
Nothing was therefore to be left in all the subor-
dinate members, but weakness, disconnection, and
confusion. To confirm this part of the plan, the
Assembly has lately come to a resolution, that no
two of their republics shall have the same com-
mander-in-chief.

To a person who takes a view of the whole, the
strength of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system
of general weakness. It is boasted that the geome-
trical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas
should be sunk, and that the people should no longer
be Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans, but French-
men, with one country, one heart, and one assembly.
But instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater
likelihood is, that the inhabitants of that region
will shortly have no country. No man ever was
attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real
affection, to a description of square measurement.
He never will glory in belonging to the Checquer,
No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 269

our public affections in our families. No cold
relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our
neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial con-
nexions. These are inns and resting places. Such
divisions of our country as have been formed by
habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were
so many little images of the great country in which
the heart found something which it could fill. The
love to the whole is not extinguished by this sub-
ordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental
training to those higher and more large regards, by
which alone men come to be affected, as with their
own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom so
extensive as that of France. In that general territory
itself, as in the old name of provinces, the citizens
are interested from old prejudices and unreasoned
habits, and not on account of the geometric properties
of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris
does certainly press down and hold these republics
together, as long as it lasts. But, for the reasons
I have already given you, I think it cannot last
very long.

Passing from the civil creating and the civil
cementing principles of this constitution, to the
National Assembly, which is to appear and act as
sovereign, we see a body in its constitution with
every possible power, and no possible external con-
troul. We see a body without fundamental laws,
without established maxims, without respected rules
of proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any
system whatsoever. Their idea of their powers is
always taken . at the utmost stretch of legislative
competency, and their examples for common cases

A a -i

'270 REFLECTIONS OS THE

from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity.
The future is to be in most respects like the present
Assembly; but, by the mode of the new elections
and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be
purged of the small degree of internal controul
existing in a minority chosen originally from various
interests, and preserving something of their spirit.
If possible, the next Assembly must be worse than
the present. The present, by destroying and altering
every thing, will leave to their successors apparently
nothing popular to dq. They will be roused by
emulation and example to enterprises the boldest
and the most absurd. To suppose such an assembly
sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.

Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do
every thing at once, have forgot one thing that
seems essential, and which, I believe, never has
been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by
any projector of a republic. They have forgot to
constitute a senate, or something of that nature
and character. Never, before this time, was heard
of a body politic composed of one legislative and
active assembly, and its executive officers, without
such a council ; without something to which foreign
states might connect themselves; something to which,
in the ordinary detail of government, the people
could look up ; something which might give a bias
and steadiness, and preserve something like con-
sistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body
kings generally have as a council. A monarchy
may exist without it ; but it seems to be in the
very essence of a republican government. It hold-
a sort of middle place between the supreme power

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 271

exercised by the people, or immediately delegated
from them, and the mere executive. Of this there
are no traces in your constitution ; and, in providing
nothing of this kind, your Solons and Numas have,
as much as in any thing else, discovered a sovereign
incapacity.

Let us now turn our eyes to what they have
done towards the formation of an executive power.
For this they have chosen a degraded king. This
their first executive officer is to be a machine,
without any sort of deliberative discretion in any
one act of his function. At best he is but a
channel to convey to the National Assembly such
matter as it may import that body to know. If he
had been made the exclusive channel, the power
would not have been without its importance ;
though infinitely perilous to those who would
choose to exercise it. But public intelligence and
statement of facts may pass to the Assembly, with
equal authenticity, through any other conveyance.
As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction
to measures by the statement of an authorized
reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.

To consider the French scheme of an executive
officer, in its two natural divisions of civil and
political — In the first it must be observed, that,
according to the new constitution, the higher parts
of judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the
king. The king of France is not the fountain of
justice. The judges, neither the original nor the
appellate, are of his nomination. He neither pro-
poses the candidates, nor has a negative on the
choice. He is not even the public prosecutor. He

ll'-i- REFLECTIONS ON THE

serves only as a notary to authenticate the choice
made of the judges in the several districts. By
his officers he is to execute their sentence. When
we look into the true nature of his authority, lie
appears to be nothing more than a chief of 1mm-
hailiffs, serjeants-at-mace, catchpoles, jailers, and
hangmen. It is impossible to place any tiling
called royalty in a more degrading point of view.
A thousand times better had it been for the dignity
of this unhappy prince, that he had nothing at all
to do with the administration of justice, deprived
as he is of all that is venerable, and all that is
consolatory in that function, without power of
originating any process; without a power of sus-
pension, mitigation, or pardon. Every thing in
justice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him.
It was not for nothing that the Assembly has been
at such pains to remove the stigma from certain
offices, when they were resolved to place the person
who had lately been their king in a situation but one
degree above the executioner, and in an office nearly
of the same quality. It is not in nature, that
situated as the king of the French now is, he can
respect himself, or can be respected by others.

View this new executive officer on the side of
his political capacity, as he acts under the order*
of the National Assembly. To execute laws is a
royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king.
However, a political executive magistracy, though
merely such, is a great trust. It is a trust indeed
that has much depending upon its faithful and
diligent performance, both in the person presiding
in it, and in all his subordinates. Mean- of perform-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 273

ing this duty ought to be given by regulation ; and
dispositions towards it ought to be infused by the
circumstances attendant on the trust. It ought to
be environed with dignity, authority, and considera-
tion, and it ought to lead to glory. The office of
execution is an office of exertion. It is not from
impotence we are to expect the tasks of power.
What sort of person is a king to command executory
service, who has no means whatsoever to reward it?
Not in a permanent office ; not in a grant of land;
no, not in a pension of fifty pounds a-year ; not in
the vainest and most trivial title. In France the
king is no more the fountain of honour than he is
the fountain of justice. All rewards, all distinctions,
are in other hands. Those who serve the king can
be actuated by no natural motive but fear ; by a
fear of every thing except their master. His func-
tions of internal coercion are as odious as those
which he exercises in the department of justice.
If relief is to be given to any municipality, the
Assembly gives it. If troops are to be sent to
reduce them to obedience to the Assembly, the
king is to execute the order ; and upon every occa-
sion he is to be spattered over with the blood of
his people. He has no negative ; yet his name and
authority is used to enforce every harsh decree.
Nay, he must concur in the butchery of those who
shall attempt to free him from his imprisonment, or
shew the slightest attachment to his person or to his
ancient authority.

Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in
such a manner, that those who compose it should
be disposed to love and to venerate those whom

274 INFLECTIONS ON Till

they are bound to obey. A purposed neglect, or,
what is worse, a literal but perverse and malignant
obedience, must be the ruin of the wisest counsels.
In vain will the law attempt to anticipate or to
follow such studied neglects and fraudulent atten-
tions. To make men act zealously is not in the
competence of law. Kings, even such as are truly
kings, may and ought to bear the freedom (if
subjects that are obnoxious to them. They may
too, without derogating from themselves, beat even
the authority of such persons, if it promotes their
service. Louis the Twelfth mortally hated the
cardinal de Richelieu ; but his support of that
minister against his rivals was the source of all the
glory of his reign, and the solid foundation of his
throne itself. Louis the Fourteenth, when come
to the throne, did not love the cardinal Mazarin ;
but for his interests he preserved him in power.
When old, he detested Louvois ; but for years,
whilst he faithfully served his greatness, he endured
his person. When George the Second took Mr.
Pitt, who certainly was not agreeable to him, into
his councils, he did nothing which could humble a
wise sovereign. But these ministers, who were
chosen by affairs, not by affections, acted in the
name of, and in trust for, kings ; and not as their
avowed, constitutional, and ostensible masters. I
think it impossible that any king, when lie has re-
covered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity
and vigour into measures which he knows to be
dictated by those who, he must be persuaded, are
in the highest degree ill affected to his person.
Will any ministers, who serve such a king (or

DEVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 2~5

whatever he may be called) with but a decent ap-
pearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of
those whom but the other day in his name they had
committed to the Bastile? will they obey the orders
of those whom, whilst they were exercising despotic
justice upon them, they conceived they were treat-
ing with lenity ; and for whom, in a prison, they
thought they had' provided an asylum? If you
expect such obedience, amongst your other innova-
tions and regenerations, you ought to make a revolu-
tion in nature, and provide a new constitution for
the human mind. Otherwise, your supreme govern-
ment cannot harmonize with its executory system.
There are cases in which we cannot take up with
names and abstractions. You may call half-a-dozen
leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear
and hate, the nation. It makes no other difference,
than to make us fear and hate them the more. If
it had been thought justifiable and expedient to
make such a revolution by such means, and through
such persons, as you have made yours, it would
have been more wise to have completed the business
of the 5th and 6th of October. The new execu-
tive officer would then owe his situation to his real
masters ; and he might be bound in interest, in the
society of crime, and (if in crimes there could be
virtues) in gratitude, to serve those who had pro-
moted him to a place of great lucre and great
sensual indulgence ; and of something more : for
imore he must have received from those who cer-
tainly would not have limited an aggrandized
creature, as they have done a submitting antagonist.
A king circumstanced as the present, if lie is totally

276 REFLECTIONS ON THE

stupified by his misfortunes, so as to think it not
the necessity, but the premium and privilege, of life,
to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory, can
never be fit for the office. If he feels as men com-
monly feel, he must be sensible that an off
circumstanced is one in which he can obtain no fame
or reputation. He has no generous interest that
can excite him to action. At best, his conduct wdl
be passive and defensive. To inferior people such
an office might be matter of honour. But to be
rai&ed to it, and to descend to it, are different things,
and suggest did'erent sentiments. Does he nally
name the ministers'? They will have a sympathy
with him. Are they forced upon him ? The whole
business between them and the nominal king will
be mutual counteraction. In all other countries,
the office of ministers of state is of the highest
dignity. In France it is full of peril, and incapable
of glory. Rivals however they will have in their
nothingness, whilst shallow ambition exists in the
world, or the desire of a miserable salary is an incen-
tive to short-sighted avarice. Those competitors
of the ministers are unable by your constitution to
attack them in their vital parts, whilst they have not
the means of repelling their charges in any other
than the degrading character of culprits. The
ministers of state in France are the only persons in
that country who are incapable of a share in the
national councils. What ministers ! What councils!
What a nation ! — But they are responsible. It is
a poor service that is to be had from responsibility.
The elevation of mind to be derived from feai
will never make a nation glorious. Responsibility

REVOLUTION IN TRANCE. 277

prevents crimes. It makes all attempts against the
laws dangerous. But for a principle of active and
zealous service, none but idiots could think of it.
Is the conduct of a war to be trusted to a man who
may abhor its principle ; who, in every step he may
take to render it successful, confirms the power of
those by whom he is oppressed? Will foreign states
seriously treat with him who has no prerogative of
peace or war ; no, not so much as in a single vote
by himself or his ministers, or by any one whom
he can possibly influence ? A state of contempt is
not a state for a prince : better get rid of him at
once:

I know it will be said, that, these humours in the
court and executive government will continue only
through this generation ; and that the king has been
brought to declare the dauphin shall be educated
in a conformity to his situation. If he is made to
conform to his situation, he will have no education
at all. His training must be worse even than that
of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads — whether he
reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him
his ancestors were kings. Thenceforward his object
must be to assert himself, and to avenge his parents.
This you will say is not his duty. That may be ;
but it is nature ; and whilst you pique nature against
you, you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this
futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom,
for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity,
counteraction, inefficiency, and decay ; and it pre-
pares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see
nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it au-
thority) that has even an appearance of vigour, or

B B

278 REFLECTIONS ON lilt

that has the smallest degree of just correspondence
or symmetry, or amicable relation, with the supreme
power, either as it now exists, or as it is planned for
the future government.

You have settled, by an economy as perverted as
the policy, two* establishments of government;
one real, one fictitious. Both maintained at a vast
expense ; but the fictitious at. I think, the greatest.
Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease
of its wheels. The expense is exorbitant ; and
neither the show nor the use deserve the tenth part
of the charge. Oh! "but I don't do justice to the
talents of the legislator : I don't allow, as I ought
to do, for necessity. Their scheme of executive
force was not their choice. This pageant must In-
kept. The people would not consent to part with
it. Right: I understand you. You do, in spite of
your grand theories, to which you would have
heaven and earth to bend — you do know how to con-
form yourselves to the nature and circumstances of
things. But when you were obliged to conform thus
far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your
submission farther, and to have made, what you were
obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to
its end. That was in your power. For instance,
among many others, it was in your power to leave
to your king the right of peace and war. What !
to leave to the executive magistrate the most
dangerous of all prerogatives r I know none more
dangerous ; nor any more necessary to be so trusted.
I do not say that this prerogative ought to be trusted

• In reality three, to reckon the provincial republican establish-
ments.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 279

to your king, unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts
along with it, which he does not now hold. But,
if he did possess them, hazardous as they are un-
doubtedly, advantages would arise from such a con-
stitution, more than compensating the risk. There
is no other way of keeping the several potentates of
Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with
the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling
in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of
your country, the most pernicious of all factions ;
factions in the interest and under the direction of
foreign powers. From that worst of evils, thank
God, we are still free. Your skill, if you had any,
would be well employed to find out indirect cor-
rectives and controuls upon this perilous trust. If
you did not like those which in England we have
chosen, your leaders might have exerted their
abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary
to exemplify the consequences of such an executive
government as yours, in the management of great
affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of
M. de Montmorin to the National Assembly, and
all the other proceedings relative to the differences
between Great Britain and Spain. It would be
treating your understanding with disrespect to point
them out to you.

I hear that the persons who are called ministers
have signified an intention of resigning their places.
I am rather astonished that they have not resigned
long since. For the universe I would not have
stood in the situation in which they have been for
this last twelvemonth. They wished well, I take
it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact be

280 REFLECTIONS ON THE

as it may, they could not, placed as they were upon
an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation,
hut be the first to see collectively, and to feel, each
in his own department, the evils which have been
produced by that Revolution. In every step which
they took, or forbore to take, they must have felt
the degraded situation of their country, and their
utter incapacity of serving it. They are in a species
of subordinate servitude, in which no men before
them were ever seen. Without confidence from
their sovereign, on whom they were forced, or from
the assembly who forced them upon him, all the
noble functions of their office are executed by com-
mittees of the assembly, without any regard what-
soever to their personal or their official authority.
They are to execute, without power; they are to
be responsible, without discretion ; they are to
deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situa-
tion, under two sovereigns, over neither of whom
they have any influence, they must act in such a
manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend)
sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the other,
and always to betray themselves. Such has been
their situation ; such must be the situation of those
who succeed them. I have much respect, and many
good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to him
for attentions. I thought, when his enemies had
driven him from Versailles, that his exile was a sub-
ject of most serious congratulation — ted mulkB urbes
etpubheavota vicerunt. He is now sitting on the
ruins of the finances, and of the monarchy of France.
A great deal more might be observed on the
strange constitution of the executory put of the

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 281

new government ; but fatigue must give bounds to
tlie discussion of subjects, which in themselves have
hardly any limits.

As little genius and talent am I able to perceive
in the plan of judicature formed by the National
Assembly. According to their invariable course,
the framers of your constitution have begun with
the utter abolition of the parliaments. These
venerable bodies, like the rest of the old govern-
ment, stood in need of reform, even though there
should be no change made in the monarchy. They
required several more alterations to adapt them to
the system of a free constitution. But they had
particulars in their constitution, and those not a few,
which deserved approbation from the wise. They
possessed one fundamental excellence ; they were
independent. The most doubtful circumstance at-
tendant on their office, that of its being vendible,
contributed however to this independency of charac-
ter. They held for life. Indeed they may be said
to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the
monarch, they were considered as nearly out of his
power. The most determined exertions of that
authority against them only shewed ' their radical
independence. They composed permanent bodies
politic, constituted to resist arbitrary innovation ;
and from that corporate constitution, and from most
of their forms, they were well calculated to afford
both certainty and stability to the laws. They had
been a safe asylum to secure these laws, in all the
revolutions of humour and opinion. They had
saved that sacred deposit of the country during the
reigns of arbitrary princes, and the struggles of

b i. .;

282 REFLECTIONS ON THE

arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory
and record of the constitution. They were the
great security to private property ; which might be

said (when personal liberty had no existence) to be,
in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever ie supreme in a state, ought
to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority 80.
constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but
in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a
security to its justice against its power. It ought
to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior
to the state.

These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the
excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an
independent judicature was ten times more necessary
when a democracy became the absolute power of
the country. In that constitution, elective, tem-
porary, local judges, such BE you have contrived,
exercising their dependent functions in a narrow
society, must be the worst of all tribunals. In them
it will be vain to look for any appearance of justice
towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, to-
wards the minority of routed parties, towards all
those who in the election have supported unsuccess-
ful candidates.. It will be impossible to keep the
new tribunals clear of the worst spirit of faction.
All contrivances by ballot, we know experimentally
to be vain and childish to prevent a discovery of
inclinations. Where they may the best answer the
purposes of concealment, they answer to produce
suspicion, and this is a still more mischievous cause
of partiality.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 283

If the parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served, in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an
exact parallel,) but nearly the same, purposes as the
court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens ; that
is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils
of a light and unjust democracy. Every one knows
that this tribunal was the great stay of that state ;
every one knows with what care it was upheld, and
with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The
parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I
admit ; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and
not so much the vice of their constitution itself, as
it must be in your new contrivance of sexennial
elective judicatories. Several English commend the
abolition of the old tribunals, as supposing that they
determined every thing by bribery and corruption.
But they have stood the test of monarchic and
republican scrutiny. The court was well disposed
to prove corruption on those bodies when they
were dissolved in 1771. — Those who have again
dissolved them would have done the same if they
could — but both inquisitions having failed, I con-
clude that gross pecuniary corruption must have
been rather rare amongst them.

It would have been prudent, along with the par-
liaments, to preserve their ancient power of register-
ing, and of remonstrating at least, upon all the
decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon
those which passed in the time of the monarchy.
It would be a means of squaring the occasional
■creea of a democracy to some principles of general

2S4 REFLECTIONS ON Till

jurisprudence. The ruin of the ancient democracies
was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional de-
crees, psephismata. This practice soon broke in
upon the tenor and consistency of the laws ; it
abated the respect of the people towards them j and
totally destroyed them in the end.

Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which,
in the time of the monarchy existed in the par-
liament of Paris, in your principal executive officer,
whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in
calling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought
never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to
execute. This is to understand neither council qoi
execution ; neither authority nor obedience. The
person whom you call king, ought not to have this
power, or he ought to have more.

Your present arrangement is strictly judicial.
Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating
your judges on a bench of independence, your object
is to reduce them to the most blind obedience.
As you have changed all things, you have invented
new principles of order. You tirst appoint judges,
who, I suppose, are to determine according to law j
and then you let them know, that, at some time or
other, you intend to give them some law by which
they are to determine. Any studies which they
have made (if any they have made) are to be useless
to them. But to supply these studies, they are to
be sworn to obey all the rules, orders, and instruc-
tions, which from time to time they are to receive
from the National Assembly. These, if they submit
to, they leave no ground of law to the subject!
They become complete, and most dangerous instruJ

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 285

merits in the hands of the governing power, which,
in the midst of a cause, or on the prospect of it,
may wholly change the rule of decision. If these
orders of the National Assembly come to be con-
trary to the will of the people, who locally choose
those judges, such confusion must happen as is
terrible to think of. For the judges owe their places
to the local authority ; and the commands they are
sworn to obey come from those who have no share
in their appointment. In the mean time they have
the example of the court of Chatelet to encourage
and guide them in the exercise of their functions.
That court is to try criminals sent to it by the
National Assembly, or brought before it by other
courses of delation. They sit under a guard to
save their own lives. They know not by what law
they judge, nor under what authority they act, nor
by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they
are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their
lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor can it be
ascertained ; but when they acquit, we know they
have seen the persons whom they discharge, with
perfect impunity to the actors, hanged at the door
of their court.

The Assembly indeed promise that they will form
a body of law, which shall be short, simple, clear,
and so forth. That is, by their short laws, they
will leave much to the discretion of the judge ;
whilst they have exploded the authority of all the
learning which could make judicial discretion (a thing
I perilous at best) deserving the appellation of a sound
discretion.

It is curious to observe, that the administrative

■JHi nil LE( i IONS ON i ill

bodies are carefully exempted from the jurisdiction
of these new tribunals. Thai is, those persons are
exempted from the power of the laws, who ought
to be the most entirely submitted to them. Those
who execute public pecuniary trusts, ought of all
meri to be the most strictly held to their duty.
One would have thought that it must have been
among your earliest cares, if you did not mean that
i In isc administrative bodies should be real, sovereign*
independent states, to form an awful tribunal, like
your late parliaments, or like our king's - bench,
where all corporate officers might obtain protection
in the legal exercise of their functions, and would
find coercion if they trespassed against their leg tl
duty. Hut the cause of the exemption is plain.
These administrative bodies are the great instru-
ments of the present leaders in their progress
through democracy to oligarchy. They must there-
fore be put above the law. Tt will be said, that the
legal tribunals which you have made are unfit to
coerce them. They are undoubtedly. They are
unfit for any rational purpose. It will be said too.
that the administrative bodies will be accountable to
the general assembly. This I fear is talking without
much consideration of the nature of that assembly,
or of these corporations. However, to be subject to
the pleasure of that assembly, is not to be subject to.
law, either for protection or for constraint.

This establishment of judges as yet wants some-
thing to its completion. It is to be crowned by
a new tribunal. This to lie a grand state judi-
cature: and it is to judge of crimes committed
aurain>t the nation, that is, against the power of the

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. '287

Assembly. It seems as if they had something in
their view of the nature of the high court of justice
erected in England during the time of the great
usurpation. As they have not yet finished this part
of the scheme, it is impossible to form a direct judg-
ment upon it. However, if great care is not taken
to form it in a spirit very different from that which
has guided them' in their proceedings relative to
state offences, this tribunal, subservient to their
inquisition, the committee of research, will extinguish
the last sparks of liberty in France, and settle the
most dreadful and arbitrary tyranny ever known in
any nation. If they wish to give to this tribunal
any appearance of liberty and justice, they must
evoke them, or send to it the causes relative to their
own members, at their pleasure. They must also
remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic
of Paris.*

Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitu-
tion of your army than what is discoverable in your
plan of judicature ? The able arrangement of this
part is the more difficult, and requires the greater
skill and attention, not only as a great concern in
itself, but as it is the third cementing principle in the
new body of republics, which you call the French
nation. Truly it is not easy to divine what that
army may become at last. You have voted a very
large one, and on good appointments, at least fully
equal to your apparent means of payment. But what
is the principle of its discipline ? or whom is it to
obey? You have got the wolf by the ears, and I

• For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judica-
tures, and of the committee of research, see M. det'alonne's work.

288 REFLECTIONS ON THE

wish you joy of the happy position in which you
have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you
are well circumstanced for a free- deliberation, re-
latively to that army, or to any thing else.

The minister and secretary of state for the war
department is M. de la Tour du Pin. This gentle-
man, like his colleagues in administration. is a most
zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine
admirer of the new constitution which originated in
that event. His statement of facts relative to the
military of France, is important, not only from Ins
official and personal authority, but because it displays
very clearly the actual condition of the army in
France, and because it throws light on the principles
upon which the Assembly proceeds in the adminis-
tration of this critical object. It may enable us to
form some judgment, how far it may be expedient in
this country to imitate the martial policy of France.

M. de la Tour du Pin, on the 4th of last June,
conies to give an account of the state of his depart-
ment, as it exists under the auspices of the National
Assembly. No man knows it so well ; no man
can express it better. Addressing himself to the
National Assembly, he says, " His majesty lias tliis
"dm/ sent me to apprise you of the multiplied dis-
orders of which evert/ day he receives the most
"distressing intelligence. The army (le corps
"militarie) threatens to fall into the most turbulent
"anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate
"at once the respect due to the laws, to the king,
"to the order established by your decrees, and to
"the oaths which they have taken with the most
"awful solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give

REVOLUTION IN FHANCE. 289

' you information of these excesses, my heart bleeds
' when I consider who they are that have committed
' them. Those, against whom it is not in my
' power to withhold the most grievous complaints,
' are a part of that very soldiery which to this day
' have been so full of honour and loyalty, and with
' whom, for fifty years, I have lived the comrade
' and the friend. '

" What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and
'delusion has all at once led them astray? Whilst
' you are indefatigable in establishing uniformity in
' the empire, and moulding the whole into one
' coherent and consistent body ; whilst the French
' are taught by you, at once the respect which the
' laws owe to the rights of man, and that which the
' citizens owe to the laws, the administration of the
'army presents nothing but disturbance and con-
' fusion. I see in more than one corps the bonds
' of discipline relaxed or broken ; the most unheard-
' of pretensions avowed directly and without any
' disguise ; the ordinances without force ; the chiefs
' without authority ; the military chest and the
'colours carried off; the authority of the king
'himself \risum teneatis ?] proudly defied; the
' officers despised, degraded, threatened, driven
' away, and some of them prisoners in the midst of
' their corps, dragging on a precarious life in the
' bosom of disgust and humiliation. To fill up the
' measure of all these horrors, the commandants of
' places have had their throats cut, under the eyes,
' and almost in the arms, of their own soldiers.

"These evils arc great; but they are not the
" worst consequences which may be produced by

2f>0 REFLECTIONS ON THE

•' such military insurrections. Sooner or later they
•'may menace the nation itself. The natttrx of
"things requires that the army should never ad
"but as an instrument. The moment that, erecting
" itself into a deliberative body, it shall act according
" to its own resolutions, the government, he it what
" it may, will immediately degenerate into a militant
"democracy ; a species of political monster, which
"has always ended by devouring those who have
" produced it.

" After all this, who must not be alarmed at the
"irregular consultations, and turbulent committees,
"formed in some regiments by the common soldiers
"and non-commissioned officers, without the know-
ledge, or even in contempt of the authority, of
"their superiors; although the presence and con-
currence of those superiors could give no au-
thority to such monstrous democratic assemblies
" [cornices]."

It is not necessary to add much to this finished
picture: finished as far as its canvass admits ; but,
as I apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature
and complexity of the disorders of this military
democracy, which, the minister-at-war truly and
wisely observes, wherever it exists, must be the
true constitution of the state, by whatever formal
appellation it may pass. For, though he informs
the Assembly that the more considerable part of the
army have not cast off their obedience, but are still
attached to their duty, yet those travellers who have
seen the corps whose conduct is the best, rather
observe in them the absence of mutiny than the
existence of discipline.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 291

I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to
reflect upon the expressions of surprise which this
minister has let fall, relative to the excesses he
relates. To him the departure of the troops from
their ancient principles of loyalty and honour seems
quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he
addresses himself know the causes of it but too
well. They know the doctrines which they have
preached, the decrees which they have passed, the
practices which they have countenanced. The
soldiers remember the 6th of October. They re-
colject the French guards. They have not forgotten
the taking of the king's castles in Paris and at
Marseilles. That they murdered, with impunity,
the governors in both places, has not passed out of
their minds. They do not abandon the principles
laid down so ostentatiously and laboriously of the
equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to
the degradation of the whole noblesse of France,
and the suppression of the very idea of a gentleman.
The total abolition of titles and distinctions is not
lost upon them. But M. du Fin is astonished at
their disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly
have taught them at the same time the respect due
to laws. It is easy to judge which of the two sorts
of lessons men with arms in their hands are likely
to learn. As to the authority of the king, we may
collect from the minister himself (if any argument
on that head were not quite superfluous) that it is
not of more consideration with these troops, than it
is with every body else. " The king," says he,
"has over and over again repeated his orders to put
" a stop to these excesses : but, in so terrible a crisis,

•292 l.l u I ' riONS ON THE

" your [the Assembly's] concurrence is become in-
"dispensably necessary to prevent the evils which
"menace the state. You unite to the force of the
"legislative power, that of opinion still more hu-
" portant." To be sure the army can have no
opinion of the power or authority of the kinfr.
Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, thai
the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater
degree of liberty than that royal figure.

It is now to be seen what has been proposed in
this exigency, one ofjhe greatest that can happen
in a state. The minister requests the Assembly to
array itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its
majesty. He desires that the grave and severe
principles announced by them may give vigour to
the king's proclamation. After this we should have
looked for courts civil and martial ; breaking of some
corps, decimating others, and all the terrible means
which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest
the progress of the most terrible of all evils ; par-
ticularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry
would be made into the murder of commandants
in the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all
this, or of any thing like it. After they had been
told that the soldiery trampled upon the decrees of
the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly
pass new decrees ; and they authorise the king to
make new proclamations. After the secretary-at-
war had stated that the regiments had paid no
regard to oaths pretes avec la plus mtposantt solem*
tiitc — they propose — what V More oaths. They
renew decrees and proclamations as they experience
their insufficiency, and they multiply oaths in pro-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 293

portion as they weaken, in the minds of men, the
sanctions of religion. I hope that handy abridg-
ments of the excellent sermons of Voltaire, d'Alem-
bert, Diderot, and Helvetius, on the Immortality of
the Soul, on a particular superintending Providence,
and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments,
are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic
oaths. Of this I have no doubt ; as I understand
that a certain description of reading makes no in-
considerable part of their military exercises, and that
they are full as well supplied with the ammunition
of pamphlets as of cartridges.

'To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspira-
cies, irregular consultations, seditious committees,
and monstrous democratic assemblies [ ' comitia,
cornices'] of the soldiers, and all the disorders
arising from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and in-
subordination, I believe the most astonishing means
have been used that ever occurred to men, even in
all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less
than this : — The king has promulgated in circular
letters to all the regiments his direct authority
and encouragement, that the several corps should
join themselves with the clubs and confederations
in the several municipalities, and mix with them in
their feasts and civic entertainments ! This jolly
discipline, it seems, is to soften the ferocity of
their minds ; to reconcile them to their bottle
companions of other descriptions ; and to merge
particular conspiracies in more general associations.

•' • C'omme sa majcsh' y a reconnu, non one systSme d'associatious

juii'tHulxrcs. mais une reunion de volontes de tons les Franr-ois pour
la Liberty ct la prosperite communes, ainsi pour la maintkn fir 1'ordre

c c 3

294 hi i i.i i noNS on rm

That thi.s remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers,
as they are described by M. de la Tour du Pin,
lean readily believe ; and that, however mutinous
otherwise, they will dutifully submit themselves
to these nival proclamations. But I should ques-
tion whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and
feasting, would dispose them more than at present
they are disposed, to an obedience to tlu'ir officer* :
or teach them better to submit to the austere rules
of military discipline. It will make them admirable
citizens after the French mode, but not quite so
good soldiers after any mode. A doubt might well
arise, whether the conversations at these good tables
would fit them a great deal the better for the character
of mere instruments, which this veteran officer and
statesman justly observes the nature of things always
requires an army to be.

Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline, by the free conversation of the soldiers
with the municipal festive societies, which is thus
officially encouraged by royal authority and sanction,
we may judge by the state of the municipalities
themselves, furnished to us by the war minister
in this very speech. He conceives good hopes
of the success of his endeavours towards restoring
order for the present from the good disposition of
certain regiments ; but he finds something cloudy
with regard to the future. As to preventing the
return of confusion, "for this, the administration

publique ; il a pens£ qu'j] convenoit que chaque regimen! prit p;irr
A. ces fetes civiques pour multiplier lis rapports, et referrer ti
d'unioa entre Irs. citoyens et les troupes.— Lest 1 should not) hi
credited. 1 insert the words, authorising the troops to feast with the
populai confederacies.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 295

" (says he) cannot be answerable to you, as long
" as they see the municipalities arrogate to them-
" selves an authority over the troops, which your
" institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch.
" You have fixed the limits of the military authority
" and the municipal authority. You have bounded
" the action, which you have permitted to the latter
" over the former, to the right of requisition ; but
r never did the letter or the spirit of your decrees
" authorise the commons in these municipalities to
" break the officers, to try them, to give orders to
r the soldiers, to drive them from the posts com-
" mitted to their guard, to stop them in their
" marches ordered by the king, or, in a word, to
" enslave the troops to the caprice of each of the
" cities, or even market towns, through which they
" are to pass."

Such is the character and disposition of the mu-
nicipal society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to
bring them back to the true principles of military
subordination, and to render them machines in the
hands of the supreme power of the country ! Such
are the distempers of the French troops ! Such is
their cure ! As the army is, so is the navy. The
municipalities supersede the orders of the Assembly,
and the seamen in their turn supersede the orders
of the municipalities. From my heart I pity the
condition of a respectable servant of the public,
like this war minister, obliged in his old age to
pledge the Assembly in their civic cups, and to
enter with a hoary head into all the fantastic
vagaries of these juvenile politicians. Such schemes
are not like propositions coming from a man of

296 REFLECTIONS OH in I

fifty years wear and tear among mankind. They
seem rather such as ought to be expected from
those grand compounders in politics, who shorten
the road to their degrees in the state ; and have
a certain inward fanatical assurance and illumination
upon all subjects; upon the credit of which one Of,
their doctors has thought lit, with great applause.
and greater success, to caution the Assembly not to
attend to old men, or to any persons who valued
themselves upon their experience. 1 suppo
the ministers of state must qualify, and take this'
test; wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of
experience and observation. Every man has his
own relish. But I think, if 1 could not attain to
the wisdom, I would at least preserve something
of the stiff and peremptory dignity, of age. These
gentlemen deal in regeneration : but at any price
1 should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be re]
rated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric,
to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in
my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their
barbarous metaphysics.* Si isti tni/ti largiantuH
nt repueriscam, et in eorum amis vagiam, valek
recusem !

The imbecility of any part of the puerile and
pedantic system, which they call a constitution,
cannot be laid open without discovering the utter
insufficiency and mischief of every other part with
which it comes in contact, or that bears any the
remotest relation to it. You cannot propose a re-
medy for the incompetence of the crown, without

* Tin war minister has since quitted U nod his

"nice.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 297

displaying the debility of the Assembly. You cannot
deliberate on the confusion of the army of the state,
without disclosing the worse disorders of the armed
municipalities. The military lays open the civil,
and the civil betrays the military, anarchy. I wish
every body carefully to peruse the eloquent speech
(such it is) of Mons. de la Tour du Pin. He attri-
butes the salvation' of the municipalities to the good
behaviour of some of the troops. These troops are
to preserve the well-disposed part of the muni-
cipalities, which is confessed to be the weakest,
from the pillage of the worst disposed, which is
the strongest. But the municipalities affect a
sovereignty, and will command those troops which
are necessary for their protection. Indeed they
must command them or court them. The muni-
cipalities, by the necessity of their situation, and
by the republican powers they have obtained, must,
with relation to the military, be the masters, or the
servants, or the confederates, or each successively ;
or they must make a jumble of all together, accord-
ing to circumstances. What government is there
to coerce the army but the municipality, or the
municipality but the army? To preserve concord
where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of
all consequences, the Assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves ; and
they hope to preserve themselves from a purely
military democracy, by giving it a debauched interest
in the municipal.

If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in
the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an
elective attraction will draw them to the lowest

298 1.1 i LI * 1 l"\- ON I HI

and most desperate part. With them will Ik- then
habits, affections, and sympathies. The military
conspiracies, which are to bo remedied by civic
confederacies; the rebellious municipalities, which

are to be rendered obedient by furnishing them
with the means of seducing the very armies of the

state that are to keep them in order ; all these
chimeras of a monstrous and portentous policy
must aggravate the confusion from which they
have arisen. There must be blood. The want of
common judgment manifested in the construction
of all their descriptions of forces, and in all their
kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will make it
flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time and
in one part. They will break out in others ;
because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these
schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious
citizens, must weaken still more and more the
military connexion of soldiers with their officers,
as well as add military and mutinous audacity to
turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real
army, the officer should be first and last in the eye
of the soldier ; first and last in his attention, ob-
servance, and esteem. Officers it seems there are
to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and
patience. They are to manage their troops l>y
electioneering arts. They must bear themselves
as candidates, not as commanders, lmt as by such
means power may be occasionally in their bands,
the authority by which they are to be nominated
becomes of high importance.

What you may do finally, does not appear ;
nor is it of much moment, whilst the strange and

REVOLUTION IN I'UANCE. 299

contradictory relation between your army and all
the parts of your republic, as well as the puzzled
relation of those parts to each other and to the
whole, remain as they are. You seem to have
given the provisional nomination of the officers,
in the first instance, to the king, with a reserve of
approbation by the National Assembly. Men who
have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious
in discovering the true seat of power. They must
soon perceive that those who can negative indefi-
nitely, in reality appoint. The officers must there-
fore look to their intrigues in the Assembly, as the
sole, certain road to promotion. Still, however,
by your new constitution they must begin their
solicitation at court. This double negotiation for
military rank seems to me a contrivance as well
adapted, as if it were studied for no other end, to
promote faction in the Assembly itself, relative to
this vast military patronage ; and then to poison
the corps of officers with factions of a nature
still more dangerous to the safety of government,
upon any bottom on which it can be placed, and
destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army
itself. Those officers, who lose the promotions
intended for them by the crown, must become of
a faction opposite to that of the Assembly which has
rejected their claims, and must nourish discontents
in the heart of the army against the ruling powers.
Those officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying
their point through an interest in the Assembly, feel
themselves to be at best only second in the good-
will of the crown, though first in that of the Assembly,
must slight an authority which would not advance,

300 R] M.i:< TIONS on nit

Hid could not retard, their promotion. It' to avoid
these evils you will have no other rule for command
or promotion than seniority, you will have an army
of formality; at the same time it will become more
independent, and more; of a military republic. Not
they, but the king is the machine. A king is not
to be deposed by halves. If he is not every thing
in the command of an army, he is nothing. What
is the effect of a power placed nominally at the
head of the army, who to that army is no object
of gratitude, or of fear? Such a cipher is not fit
for the administration of an object, of all things (In-
most delicate, the supreme command of military
men. They must be constrained (and their incli-
nations lead them to what their necessities require)
by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal
authority. The authority of the Assembly it — - > 1 1
suffers by passing through such a debilitating clfannel
as they have chosen. The army will not long look
to an Assembly acting through the organ of false
show, and palpable imposition. They will not
seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They will
either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive
king. This relation of your army to the crown
will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious
dilemma in your politics.

It is besides to be considered, whether an assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession
of another sort of organ through which its orders
were to pass, is lit for promoting the obedience and
discipline of an army. It is known, that armies have
hitherto yielded a very precarious and uncertain
obedience to any senate, or populai authority | and

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 301

they will least of all yield it to an assembly which
is only to have a continuance of two years. The
officers must totally lose the characteristic dis-
position of military men, if they see with perfect
submission and due admiration, the dominion of
pleaders ; especially when they find that they have
a new court to pay to an endless succession of those
pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of
whose command, (if they should have any,) must
be as uncertain as their duration is transient. In
the weakness of one kind of authority, and in
the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will
remain for some time mutinous and full of faction,
until some popular general, who understands the
art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses
the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of
all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on
his personal account. There is no other way of
securing military obedience in this state of things.
But the moment in which that event shall happen,
the person who really commands the army is your
master ; the master (that is little) of your king,
the master of your Assembly, the master of your
whole republic.

How came the Assembly by their present power
over the army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching
the soldiers from their officers. They have begun
by a most terrible operation. They have touched
the central point, about which the particles that
compose armies are at repose. They have destroyed
the principle of obedience in the great, essential,
critical link between the officer and the soldier,
just where the chain of military subordination com-

d u

302 rsi in room ok phi

mences, and on which the whole of that system
depends. The soldier is told. In; is a citizen, and
has tlic rights of man and citizen. The right of
a man, he is told, is to be his own governor, and
to be ruled only by those to whom he delegates
that self-government. It is very natural lie should
think that he ought most of all to have his choice
where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience.
He will therefore, in all probability, systematically
do, what he does at present occasionally ; that is,
he will exercise at least a negative in the choice of
his officers. At present the officers are known
at best to be only permissive, and on their good
behaviour. In fact, there have been many instances
in which they have been cashiered by their corps.
Here is a second negative on the choice of the king ;
a negative as effectual at least as the other of the
Assembly. The soldiers know already that it has
been a question, not ill received in the National
Assembly, whether they ought not to have the
direct choice of their officers, or some proportion
of them ? When such matters are in deliberation,
it is no extravagant supposition that they will incline
to the opinion most favourable to their pretensions'.
They will not bear to be deemed the army of an
imprisoned king, whilst another army in the same
country, with whom too they are to feast and con-
federate, is to be considered as the free army of
a free constitution. They will cast their eyes on
the other and more permanent army — I mean the
municipal. That corps, they well know, does actually
elect its own officers. They nia\ not be able to
discern the grounds of distinction on which thc\

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 303

are not to elect a Marquis de la Fayette (or what
is his new name?) of their own. If this election of
a commander-in-chief be a part of the rights of men,
why not of theirs? They see elective justices of
peace, elective judges, elective curates, elective
bishops, elective municipalities, and elective com-
manders of the Parisian army — Why should they
alone be excluded ? Are the brave troops of France
the only men in that nation who are not the fit
judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they
paid by the state, and do they therefore lose the
rights of men ? They are a part of that nation
themselves, and contribute to that pay. And is
not the king, is not the National Assembly, and
are not all who elect the National Assembly, like-
wise paid ? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their
rights by their receiving a salary, they perceive that
in all these cases a salary is given for the exercise
of those rights. All your resolutions, all your
proceedings, all your debates, all the works of your
doctors in religion and politics, have industriously
been put into their hands ; and you expect that
they will apply to their own case just as much of
your doctrines and examples as suits your pleasure.

Every thing depends upon the army in such a
government as yours ; for you have industriously
destroyed all the opinions, and prejudices, and, as
far as in you lay, all the instincts which support go-
vernment. Therefore the moment any difference
arises between your National Assembly and any
part of the nation, you must have recourse to force.
Nothing else is left to you ; or rather you have left

■Id-l BEFLBCTION8 ON l hi

nothing else to yourselves. You see, by the report
of your war minister, that the distribution of the
army is in a great measure made with a view oi
internal coercion.* You must rule by an army :
and you have infused into that army by which you
rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation.
principles which after a time must disable you in
the use you resolve to make of it. The king i^ to
call out troops to act against his people, when the
world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing
in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens.
The colonies assert to themselves an independent
constitution and a free trade. They must be con-
strained by troops. In what chapter of your code
of the rights of men are they able to read, that it
is a part of the rights of men to have their commerce
monopolized and restrained for the benefit of Others?
As the colonists rise on you, the negroes rise on
them. Troops again—Massacre, torture, hanging !
These are your rights of men ! These are the fruits
of metaphysic declarations wantonly made, and
shamefully retracted ! It was but the other day
that the farmers of land in one of your provinces
refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord of the
soil. In consequence of this you decree, that the
country people shall pay all rents and dues, except
those which as grievances you have aholished : and
if they refuse, then you order the king to march
troops against them. You lay down metaphysic
propositions which infer universal consequences.

• Courier Francois. 30th July, 1 TPO AssemMee Xationak. N'u
mero 21"

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 305

and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism.
The leaders of the present system tell them of their
rights, as men, to take fortresses, to murder guards,
to seize on kings without the least appearance of
authority even from the Assembly, whilst, as the
sovereign legislative body, that Assembly was sitting
in the name of the nation — and yet these leaders
presume to order out the troops, which have acted
in these very disorders, to coerce those who shall
judge on the principles, and follow the examples,
which have been guaranteed by their own appro-
bation.

The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject
all feodality as the barbarism of tyranny, and they
tell them afterwards how much of that barbarous
tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they
are prodigal of light with regard to grievances, so
the people find them sparing in the extreme with
regard to redress. They know that not only cer-
tain quit-rents and personal duties, which you have
permitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no
money for the redemption,) are as nothing to those
burthens for which you have made no provision at
all. They know, that almost the whole system of
landed property in its origin is feudal ; that it is the
distribution of the possessions of the original pro-
prietors, made by a barbarous conqueror to his
barbarous instruments ; and that the most grievous
effects of the conquest are the land rents of every
kind, as without question they are.

The peasants, in all probability, arc the descend-
ants of these ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls.
I'.iil il they fail, in any degree, in the titles which

806 MM 1 .1 TION8 <>N "1 Hi

they make on the principles of antiquaries and

lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights
of men. There they find that men are equal ; and
the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought
not to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury
of any men, who by nature are no better than them-
selves, and who, if they do not labour for their
bread, are worse. They find, that by the laws of
nature the occupant and subduer of the soil is the
true proprietor ; that there is no prescription against
nature; and that the agreements (where any there
are) which have been made with the landlords,
during the time of slavery, are only the effect of
duresse and force ; and that when the people re-
entered into the rights of men, those agreements
were made as void as every thing else which had
been settled under the prevalence of the old feudal
and aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that
they see no difference between an idler with a hat
and a national cockade, and an idler in a cowl or in
a rochet. If you ground the title to rents on succes-
sion and prescription, they tell you, from the speech
of Mr. Camus, published by the National Assembly
for their information, that things ill begun cannot
avail themselves of prescription; that the title of
these lords was vicious in its origin ; and that foree
is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by suc-
cession, they will tell you, that the succession of
those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedi-
gree of property, and not rotten parchments and
silly substitutions ; that the lords have enjoyed their
usurpation too long; and that if they allow to these
lay monks any charitable pension, they OUghl to be

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. ."!<l7

thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who
is so generous towards a false claimant to his goods.
When the peasants give you back that coin of
sophistic reason, on which you have set your image
and superscription, you cry it down as base money,
and tell them you will pay for the future with French
guards, and dragoons, and hussars. You hold up,
to chastise them, the second-hand authority of a
king, who is only the instrument of destroying,
without any power of protecting either the people
or his own person. Through him it seems you will
make yourselves obeyed. They answer, You have
taught us that there are no gentlemen ; and which
of your principles teach us to bow to kings whom
we have not elected ? We know, without your
teaching, that lands were given for the support of
feudal dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices.
When you took down the cause as a grievance, why
should the more grievous effect remain ? As there
are now no hereditary honours, and no distinguished
families, why are we taxed to maintain what you tell
us ought not to exist? You have sent down our
old aristocratic landlords in no other character, and
with no other title, but that of exactors under your
authority. Have you endeavoured to make these
your rent-gatherers respectable to us ? No. You
have sent them to us with their arms reversed, their
shields broken, their impresses defaced ; and so
displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such un-
feathered two-legged things, that we no longer know
them. They are strangers to us. They do not
even go by the names of our ancient lords. Physi-
cally they may be the same men ; though we arc not

.308 rki 1.1 i l [ONfl ON Tiir

quite sure of that, on your new philosophic doc-
trine of personal identity. In all other respects
they are totally changed. We do not see why we
have not as good a right to refuse them their rents,
as you have to ahrogate all their honours, titles, and
distinctions. This we have never commissioned you
to do ; and it is one instance, among many indeed,
of your assumption of undelegated power. We see
the burghers of Paris, through their chilis, theil
mobs, and their national guards, directing yon at
their pleasure, and giving that as law to you, which,
under your authority, is transmitted as law to us.
Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives
and fortunes of us all. Why should not you attend
as much to the desires of the laborious husbandman
with regard to our rent, by which we are affected
in the most serious manner, as you do to the
demands of these insolent burghers, relative to
distinctions and titles of honour, by which neither
they nor we are affected at all? But we rind you
pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessi-
ties. Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute
to his equals'? Before this measure of yours, we
might have thought we were not perfectly equal
We might have entertained some old, habitual, un-
meaning prepossession in favour of those landlord-
hut we cannot conceive with what other view than
that of destroying all respect to them, you could
have made the law that degrades them. You ha\.
forbidden us to treat them with any of the old
formalities of respect, and now you send troops td
sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to feai

REVOLUTION IN' FRANCE. 309

and force, which you did not suffer us to yield to
the mild authority of opinion.

The ground of some of these arguments is horrid
and ridiculous to all rational ears ; hut to the
politicians of metaphysics who have opened schools
for sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy,
it is solid and conclusive. It is obvious, that on a
mere consideration of the right, the leaders in the
Assembly would not in the least have scrupled to
abrogate the rents along with the titles and family
ensigns. It would be only to follow up the principle
of their reasonings, and to complete the analogy of
their conduct. But they had newly possessed them-
selves of a great body of landed property by confis-
cation. They had this commodity at market; and
the market would have been wholly destroyed, if
they were to permit the husbandmen to riot in the
speculations with which they so freely intoxicated
themselves. The only security which property
enjoys in any one of its descriptions, is from the
interests of their rapacity with regard to some other.
They have left nothing but their own arbitrary
pleasure to determine what property is' to be pro-
tected and what subverted.

Neither have they left any principle by which any
of their municipalities can be bound to obedience ; or
even conscientiously obliged not to separate from
the whole, to become independent, or to connect
itself with some other state. The people of Lyons,
it seems, have refused lately to pay taxes. Why
should they not? What lawful authority is there
left to exact them ? The king imposed some of
them. The old states, methodised by orders, settled

310 i noNs n\ tiif.

tlic more ancient. They may Baj to the Assembly,
Who are you, that arc not our kings, nor the st a,--
we have elected, nor sit on the principl » on which
we have elected youJ And who are we, that when
we see the gahelles which you have ordered to he
paid, wholly shaken off, when we Bee the act of dl8>

obedience afterwards ratified iiy yourselves— whft
are we, that we arc not to judge what taxes we ought
or ought not to pay. and arc not to avail our-
selves of the same [towers, the validity of which you
have approved in Others' V To this the answer is, We
will send troops. The last reason of kings is always
the first with your Assemhly. This military aid
may serve for a time, whilst the impression of the
increase of pay remains, and the vanity of being
umpires in all disputes is Battered. But this weapon
will snap short, unfaithful to the hand that employ!
it. The Assemhlyr keep a school where, systemati-
cally, and with unremitting perseverance, they teach
principles, and form regulations, destructive to all
spirit of subordination, civil and military — and then
they expect that they shall hold in obedience an
anarchic people by an anarchic army.

The municipal army, which, according to their
new policy, is to balance this national army, if con-
sidered in itself only, is of a constitution much more
simple, and in every respect less exceptionable. It
is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the
crown or the kingdom; armed, and trained, and
officered at the pleasure of the districts to winch
the corps severally belong: and the personal service
of the individuals, who compose, or the fine in lieu
of personal service, are directed h\ the same ail-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 311

thority.* Nothing is more uniform. If, however,
considered in any relation to the crown, to the
National Assembly, to the public tribunals, or to
the other army, or considered in a view to any
coherence or connexion between its parts, it seems
a monster, and can hardly fail to terminate its per-
plexed movements in some great national calamity.
It is a worse preservative of a general constitution,
than the systasis of Crete, or the confederation of
Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which
has yet been imagined, in the necessities produced
by an ill-constructed system of government.

Having concluded my few remarks on the con-
stitution of the supreme power, the executive, the
judicature, the military, and on the reciprocal re-
lation of all these establishments, I shall say some-
thing of the ability showed by your legislators with
regard to the revenue.

In their proceedings relative to this object, if pos-
sible, still fewer traces appear of political judgment
or financial resource. When the states met, it
seemed to be the great object to improve the system
of revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of
oppression and vexation, and to establish it on the
most solid footing. Great were the expectations
entertained on that head throughout Europe. It
was by this grand arrangement that France was to

* I see by M. Necker's account, that the national guards of Paris
have received, over and above the money levied within their own
city, about £145,000 sterling out of the public treasure. Whether
this be an actual payment for the nine months of their existence, or
an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is
of no great importance, as certainly they may take whatever they
please.

312 RBFLl I riONS ON i HE

stand or lull ; and this became, in my opinion very
properly, the test by which the skill and patriotism
of those who ruled in that assembly would be tried.
The revenue of the State is the state. In effect all
depends upon it, whether tor support or for refor-
mation. The dignity of every occupation wholly
depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue
that may lie exerted in it. As all great qualities "t
the mind which operate in public, and are not merely
suffering and passive, require force for their display,
I had almost said for their unequivocal existence,
the revenue, which is the spring of all power, he-
comes in it- administration the sphere of every
active virtue. Puhlic virtue, being of a nature mag-
nificent and splendid, instituted for great t
and conversant about great concerns, requires abun-
dant scope and room, and cannot spread am!
under confinement, and in circumstances straitened,
narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue alone the
body politic can act in its true genius and character,
and therefore it will display just as much of its cok
lective virtue, and as much of that virtue which may
characterise those who move it, and are. as it were,
its life and guiding principle, as it is possessed of a
just revenue. For from hence, not only magnani-
mity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude,
and providence, and the tutelary protection of all
good arts, derive their food, and the growth of their
organs, hut continence, and self-denial, and labour,
and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever else there
is in which the mind shews itself above the appetite,
are no where more in their proper element than in
the provision and distribution of the public wealth.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 313

It is therefore not without reason that the science of
speculative and practical finance, which must take
to its aid so many auxiliary branches of knowledge,
stands high in the estimation not only of the ordinary
sort, but of the wisest and best men ; and as this
science has grown with the progress of its object,
the prosperity and improvement of nations has gene-
rally increased with the increase of their revenues ;
and they will both continue to grow and flourish,
as long as the balance between what is left to
strengthen the efforts of individuals, and what is
collected for the common efforts of the state, bear
to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are
kept in a close correspondence and communication.
And perhaps it may be owing to the greatness of
revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities,
that old abuses in the constitution of finances are
discovered, and their true nature and rational theory
comes to be more perfectly understood ; insomuch,
that a smaller revenue might have been more dis-
tressing in one period than a far greater is found to
be in another ; the proportionate wealth even re-
maining the same. In this state of things, the
French Assembly found something in their revenues
to preserve, to secure, and wisely to administer, as
well as to abrogate and alter. Though their proud
assumption might justify the severest tests, yet in
trying their abilities on their financial proceedings,
I would only consider what is the plain, obvious duty
of a common finance minister, and try them upon
that, and not upon models of ideal perfection.

The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an
ample revenue; to impose it with judgment and

F. E

.'514 III) LECTIONS iK .ill'

equalitj . t" employ it economically; and when
necessity obliges him to make use of credit. I
.■ure its foundations in that instance, and for ever,
by the clearness and candour of Ids proceedings, tin-
exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his
funds. On these heads we may take a short and
distinct view of the merits and abilities of those in
the National Assembly, who have taken to them-
selves the management of this arduous concern.
Far from any increase of revenue in their hands,
I find, by a report of- M. Vernier, from the com-
mittee of finances, of the 2nd of August last,
that the amount of the national revenue, as com-
pared with its produce before the Revolution.
diminished by the sum of two hundred DuHioi
eight millions sterling of the annual income, con-
siderably more than one-third of the whole !

If this be the result of great ability, never surely
was ability displayed in a more distinguished man-
ner, or with so powerful an effect. No common
folly, no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary, official neg-
ligence, even no official crime, no corruption, no
peculation, hardly any direct hostility which we have
seen in the modern world, could in s() ghort a time
have made so complete an overthrow of the finances,
and with them, of the strength of a great kingdom.
— Cedo (/ui veatrum rempubticcm tantam an

/mil riti) f

The sophisters and declaimers, as -nun as the
Assembly met, began witli decrying the ancient
constitution of the revenue in many of it- mosl
essential branches, such as the public monopoly of
salt. They charged it. as truly as unwisely, with

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 315

being ill-contrived, oppressive, and partial. This
representation they were not satisfied to make use
of in speeches preliminary to some plan of reform ;
they declared it in a solemn resolution or public-
sentence, as it were judicially, passed upon it; and
this they dispersed throughout the nation. At the
time they passed, the decree, with the same gravity
they ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and
partial tax to be paid, until they could find a re-
venue to replace it. The consequence was inevitable.
The provinces which had been always exempted
from this salt monopoly, some of whom were
charged with other contributions, perhaps equiva-
lent, were totally disinclined to bear any part of
the burden, which by an equal distribution was to
redeem the others. As to the Assembly, occupied
as it was with the declaration and violation of the
rights of men, and with their arrangements for gene-
ral confusion, it had neither leisure nor capacity to
contrive, nor authority to enforce any plan of any
kind relative to the replacing the tax or equalizing
it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting
their minds to any scheme of accommodation with
the other districts which were to be relieved.

The people of the salt provinces, impatient under
taxes damned by the authority which had directed
their payment, very soon found their patience ex-
hausted. They thought themselves as skilful in
demolishing as the Assembly could be. They re-
lieved themselves by throwing off the whole burden.
Animated by this example, each district, or part of
a district, judging of its own grievance by its own

816 BEFLECTIONS ON THB

feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, did as
it pleased with other taxes.

We are next to see how they have conducted
themselves in contriving equal impositions, propor-
tioned to the means of the citizens, and the least
likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed
in the generation of that private wealth, from whence
the public fortune must be derived. By Buffering
the several districts, and several of the individuals
in each district, to judge of what part of the old
revenue they might withhold, instead of better prin-
ciples of equality, a new inequality was introduced
of the most oppressive kind. Payments were regu-
lated by dispositions. The part'- of the kingdom
which were the most submissive, the most orderly,
or the most affectionate to the commonwealth, bore
the whole burden of the state. Nothing turn- out
to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble govern-
ment. To till up all the deficiencies in the old im-
positions, and the new deficiencies of every kind
which were to be expected, what remained to B statt
without authority? The National Assembly called
for a voluntary benevolence; for a fourth pari at
the income of all the citizens, to be estimated on the
honour of those who were to pay. They obtained
something more than could be rationally calculated,
but what was far indeed from answerable to their
real necessities, and much less to their fond expec-
tations. Rational people could have hoped for little
from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence j
a tax weak, ineffective, and unequal; a tax by
which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened,

and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon

REVOLUTION IN FHANCL. 317

integrity, generosity, and public spirit — a tax of
regulation upon virtue. At length the mask is
thrown off, and they are now trying means (with
little success) of exacting their benevolence by force.
This benevolence, the ricketty offspring of weak-
ness, was to be supported by another resource, the
twin brother of the same prolific imbecility. The
patriotic donations were to make good the failure
of the patriotic contribution. John Doe was to be-
come security for Richard Roe. By this scheme
they took things of much price from the giver, com-
paratively of small value to the receiver ; they ruined
several trades ; they pillaged the crown of its orna-
ments, the churches of their plate, and the people
of their personal decorations. The invention of
these juvenile pretenders to liberty, was in reality
nothing more than a servile imitation of one of the
poorest resources of doting despotism. They took
an old huge full-bottomed perriwig out of the
wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis the
Fourteenth to cover the premature baldness of
the National Assembly. They produced this old-
fashioned formal folly, though it had been so abun-
dantly exposed in the Memoirs of the Duke de
St. Simon, if to reasonable men it had wanted any
arguments to display its mischief and insufficiency.
A device of the same kind was tried in my memory
by Louis the Fifteenth, but it answered at no time.
However, the necessities of ruinous wars were some
excuse for desperate projects. The deliberations
of calamity are rarely wise. But here was a season
for disposition and providence. It was in a time of
profound peace, then enjoyed for five years, and

i r .!

.118 lvl ii.ii j IONS OK l III

promising a much longer continuance, that they had

recourse to this desperate trifling. They were sure
to lose more reputation by sporting, in their serious
situation, with these toys and playthings of finance,
which have filled half their journals, than could
possibly be compensated by the pom- temporary
supply which they afforded. It seemed as it those
who adopted such projects were wholly ignorant
of their circumstances, or wholly unequal to their
necessities. Whatever virtue may be in these
devices, it is obvious that neither the patriotic gifts,
nor the patriotic contribution, can ever be resorted

to again. The resources of public folly are - i

exhausted. The whole indeed of their scheme oi
revenue is to make, by any artifice, an appear-
ance of a full reservoir for the hour, whilst at the
same time they cut off the Bprings and living foun-
tains of perennial supply. The account not long
since furnished by M. Xecker was meant, without
question, to be favourable. He gives a flattering
view of the means of getting through the year; but
he expresses, as it is natural he should, some ap-
prehension for that which was to succeed. ():i
this last prognostic, instead of entering into the
grounds of this apprehension, in order, by a proper
foresight, to prevent the prognosticated evil, M.
Necker receives a sort of triendh reprimand from
the president of the Assembly.

As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossi-
ble to say any thing of them with certainty. becaUM
they have not yet had their operation; but nobody
i- so sanguine as to imagine they will fill up any
perceptible pari of the wide gaping breach which

REVOLUTION IN FRAM1 ->19

their incapacity has made in their revenues. At
present the state of their treasury sinks every day
more and more in cash, and swells more and more in
fictitious representation. When so little within or
without is now found but paper, the representative
not of opulence but of want, the creature not of
credit but of power, they imagine that our flourish-
ing state in England is owing to that bank-paper,
and not the bank-paper to the flourishing condition
of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and
to the total exclusion of all idea of power from
any part of the transaction. They forget that, in
England, not one shilling of paper-money of any
description is received but of choice ; that the whole
has had its origin in cash actually deposited ; and
that it is convertible, at pleasure, in an instant,
and without the smallest loss, into cash again. Our
paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is
of none. It is powerful on Change, because in
Westminster-hall it is impotent. In payment of
a debt of twenty shillings, a creditor may refuse all
the paper of the bank of England. Nor is there
amongst us a single public security, of. any quality
or nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority.
In fact it might be easily shewn, that our paper
wealth, instead of lessening the real coin, has a
tendency to increase it ; instead of being a substitute
for money, it only facilitates its entry, its exit, and
its circulation ; that it is the symbol of prosperity,
and not the badge of distress. Never was a scar-
city of cash, and an exuberance of paper, a subject
of complaint in this nation.

Well ! but a lessening of prodigal expenses, and

3'20 B.SFLECTIONS ON i HE

the economy which has been introduced by the
virtuous and sapient Assembly, make amends En
the losses sustained in the receipt of revenue.

In this at least the} have fulfilled the duty of ■
financier. Have those who say so looked at the
expenses of the National Assembly itself? of the
municipalities? of the city of Paris? ofthe increased
pay of the two armies ? of the new police ? ofthe new
judicatures? Have they even carefully compared
the present pension-list with the former? These
politicians have been cruel, not economical. Cora-,
paring the expenses of the former prodigal govern-
ment and its relation to the then revenues with
the expenses of this new system as oppposed to
the state of its new treasury, I believe the pre-
sent will be found beyond all comparison more
chargeable.*

It remains only to consider the proofs of financial
ability, furnished by the present French managers
when they are to raise supplies on credit. Here
I am a little at a stand ; for credit, properly speak-
ing, they have none. The credit of the ancient

• The reader will observe, that I have hut lightly touched (my
plan demanded nothing more) on the condition ofthe French finance*,

as connected with the demands upon them. If 1 had intended to
do otherwise, the materials in my hands for such a task are not
altogether perfect. On this subject . 1 refer the reader to M. de
Calonne's work : and the tremendous display thai he has made of
the havoc and devastation in the public estate, and in all the
affairs of France, caused by the presumptuous, good intentions of
ignorance and incapacity. Such effects tlm^i- causes will always
■ iint with a pretty strict eye. and.

with perhaps too much rigour, deducting every thing which maybe

placed to the account <>i a financier out of place, "ho might lie
supposed bj his enemies dasirous of making the most of his
I believe it « :M be found, that

the daring spirit of innovators, than what has !■■
it the : r was it an\ time furni

mankind.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 321

government was not indeed the best ; but they
could always, on some terms, command money,
not only at home, but from most of the countries
of Europe where a surplus capital was accumulated ;
and the credit of that government was improving daily.
The establishment of a system of liberty would of
course be supposed to give it new strength ; and so
it would actually' have done, if a system of liberty
had been established. What offers has their govern-
ment of pretended liberty had from Holland, from
Hamburgh, from Switzerland, from Genoa, from
England, for a dealing in their paper? Why should
these nations of commerce and economy enter into
any pecuniary dealings with a people who attempt
to reverse the very nature of things ; amongst whom
they see the debtor prescribing, at the point of the
bayonet, the medium of his solvency to the creditor;
discharging one of his engagements with another ;
turning his very penury into his resource; and
paying his interest with his rags ?

Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of
church plunder has induced these philosophers to
overlook all care of the public estate, , just as the
dream of the philosopher's stone induces dupes,
under the more plausible delusion of the hermetic
art, to neglect all rational means of improving their
fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this
universal medicine made of church mummy is to
cure all the evils of the state. These gentlemen
perhaps do not believe a great deal in the miracles
of piety ; but it cannot be questioned, that they have
an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege.
Is there a debt which presses them? — Issue assignats

S'2'2 Kl II | < iluNs on 1 Hi.

— Arc compensations to be made, or a maintei
decreed to those whom they have robbed of their
freehold in their office, or expelled from their pro-

tessixm— Assignats. Is a fleet to be fitted out

Assignats. If sixteen millions sterling of these
assignats, forced on the people, leave the wants
of the state as urgent as ever — issue, says one.
thirty millions sterling of assignats— says ai •
issue fourscore millions more of assignats. The
only difference among their financial factions is on
the greater or the lesser quantity of assignai
be imposed on the public suflterance. They are all
professors of assignats. Even those, whose natural
good sense and knowledge of commerce, not ob-
literated by philosophy, furnish decisive arguments
against this delusion, conclude their arguments by
proposing the emission oi assignats. I suppose
they must talk of assignats, as no other language
would be understood. All experience <>(' their
inefficacy does not in the least discourage them.
Are the old assignats depreciated at market? What
is the remedy? Issue new assignats. — Miais si
maladia, opiniatria, nun vn/f ■ . quid Hit

factre ? assignare—postea assignare; ensuita assig-
nare. The word is a trifle altered. The Latin of
your present doctors may be better than that of
your old comedy: their wisdom, and the variety
of their resources, are the same. They have not
more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though,
far from the softness of that harbinger of summec
and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous
as that of the raven.

Who bul the most desperate adventurers in phi-

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 32."5

losophy and finance could at all have thought of
destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole
security for the public credit, in the hope of re-
building it with the materials of confiscated property ?
If, however, an excessive zeal for the state should
have led a pious and venerable prelate (by an-
ticipation a father of the church*) to pillage his
own order, and, for the good of the church and
people, to take upon himself the place of grand
financier of confiscation, and comptroller general
of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were, in my
opinion, bound to show, by their subsequent con-
duct, that they knew something of the office they
assumed. When they had resolved to appropriate
to the fisc, a certain portion of the landed property
of their conquered country, it was their business
to render their bank a real fund of credit, as far
as such a bank was capable of becoming so.

To establish a current circulating credit upon
any land-bank, under any circumstances whatsoever,
has hitherto proved difficult at the very least. The
attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy. But
when the Assembly were led, through a contempt
of moral, to a defiance of economical principles,
Jit might at least have been expected, that nothing
.would be omitted on their part to lessen this diffi-
culty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy.
Jit might be expected that, to render your land-bank
tolerable, every means would be adopted that could
(display openness and candour in the statement of
|:he security; every thing which could aid the

* Lb Rnivere ofBosSnet.

^J4 HI Fl.Ki l [0N8 ON 1 111

srj oi the demand. To take things in their
most favourable point of view, your condition was
that of a man of a large landed estate, which he
wished to dispose of tor the discharge of a debt,

and the supply of certain services. Not being able
instantly to sell, yon wished to mortgage. What

would a man of fair intentions, and a commonly
clear understanding, do in such circumstances I
Ought he not first to ascertain the gross value

of the estate : the charges of its management and
disposition ; the incumbrances perpetual and tem-
porary of all kinds that affect it; then, striking
a net surplus, to calculate the just value of the
security? When that -urplus (the only security
to the creditor) had been clearly ascertained, and
properly vested in the hands of trustees; then he
would indicate the parol- to be sold, and the time
and conditions of sale; after this, he would admit
the public creditor, if he chose it. to subscribe
his stock into this new fund; or he might receive
proposals for an assigned from those who would
advance money to purchase this species of security.

This would be to proceed like men of business,

methodically and rationally; and on the only prin-

ciples of public and private credit that have an

existence. The dealer would then know exactly

what he purchased; and the only doubt which

could hang upon his mind would be, the dread

of the resumption of the spoil, which one da]

I be made (perhaps with an addition of punish!

I from the sacrilegious gripe of those execrable

lies who could I ecome purchasers at the

auction of their innocent fellow-citizens.

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 325

An open and exact statement of the clear value
of the property, and of the time, the circumstances,
and the place of sale, were all necessary, to efface
as much as possible the stigma that has hitherto
been branded on every kind of land-bank. It be-
came necessary on another principle, that is, on
account of a pledge of faith previously given on
that subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery
concern might be established by their adherence
to their first engagement. When they had finally
determined on a state resource from church booty,
they came, on the 14th of April 1790, to a solemn
resolution on the subject ; and pledged themselves
to their country, "that in the statement of the
public charges for each year, there should be brought
to account a sum sufficient for defraying the ex-
penses of the R. C. A. religion, the support of the
ministers at the altars, the relief of the poor, the
pensions to the ecclesiastics, secular as well as
regular, of the one and of the other sex, in order
that the estates and goods which are at the disposal
of the nation may be disengaged of all charges,
and employed by the representatives, or the legislative
body, to the great and most pressing exigencies of
the state." They further engaged, on the same day,
that the sum necessary for the year 1791 should
be forthwith determined.

In this resolution they admit it their duty to shew
distinctly the expense of the above objects, which,
by other resolutions, they had before engaged should
be first in the order of provision. They admit that
they ought to shew the estate clear and disengaged
of all charges, and that they should shew it im-

i r

326 RF.l II I I Iu\> n\ 1 111'

mediately. Have they dune this immediately, or
at any time? Have they ever burnished a rent-roll
of the immoveable estates, or given in an inventory
of the moveable effects which they confiscate to their
tiats? In what manner they can fulfil their
engagements of holding out to public service "an
estate disengaged of all charges," without authen-
ticating the value of the estate, or the quantum
of the charges, 1 Leave it to their English admirers
to explain. Instantly upon this assurance, and pre-
viously to any one step, towards making it [
they issue, on the eredit of so handsome a decla-
ration, sixteen millions sterling of their paper. This
was manly. Who, after this masterly stroke, can
doubt of their abilities in finance? — Bnt then, before
any other emission of these financial indulgences,
they took care at least to make good their original
promise! — If such estimate, either of the value of
the estate or the amount of the incumbrances, has
been made, it has escaped me. I never heard of it.

At length they have spoken out, and they have
made a full discovery of their abominable fraud, in
holding out the church lands as a security for any
debts, or any service whatsoever. They rob only
to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time
they defeat the ends both of the robbery and the
fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes,
which blow up their whole apparatus of force and
of deception. I am obliged to M. de Caloirae for
his reference to the document which proves this
extraordinary fact: it hid by some means escaped
me. Indeed it was not necessary to make out my
ai as to the breach of faith on the declaration

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. ^2?

of the 14th of April, 1790. By a report of their
committee it now appears, that the charge of keeping
up the reduced ecclesiastical establishments, and
other expenses attendant on religion, and main-
taining the religious of both sexes, retained or
pensioned, and the other concomitant expenses of
the same nature, which they have brought upon
themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds
the income of the estates acquired by it in the
enormous sum of two millions sterling annually ;
besides a debt of seven millions and upwards.
These are the calculating powers of imposture !
This is the finance of philosophy ! This is the
result of all the delusions held out to engage
a miserable people in rebellion, murder, and sa-
crilege, and to make them prompt and zealous
instruments in the ruin of their country ! Never
did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the con-
fiscations of the citizens. This new experiment
has succeeded like all the rest. Every honest mind,
every true lover of liberty and humanity, must
rejoice to find that injustice is not always good
policy, nor rapine the high road to riches. I
subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and
spirited observations of M. de Calonne on this
subject.*

• "Ce n'est point a l'assemblee enticre que je m'adresse ici;
je ne parle qu'a ceux qui l'egarent, en lui cachant sous des gazes
seduisantes le but ou ils l'entrainent. C'est a eux que je dis :
votre objet, vous n'en disconviendrez pas, c'est d'oter tout cspoir
au clerge, et de eonsommer sa ruine ; c'est-la, en ne vous soup-
connant d'aucune combinaison de cupidite, d'aucun regard le jeu
des eft'ets publics, c'est-la ce qu'on doit croire que vous avez en
vue dans la terrible operation que vous proposez : c'est ce qui
doit en etre le fruit Mais le peuple qui vous y interessez, quel

■"■> BCTI0N8 ON I ill

In order to persuade the world of the bottomless
resource of ecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly
have proceeded to other confiscation of estates in
offices, which could not be done with any common
colour without being compensated out of this grand
confiscation of landed property. They have thrown
upon this fund which was to shew a surplus,
disengaged of all charges, a new charge; namely,
the compensation to the whole body of the dis-
banded judicature; and of all suppressed offices
and estates; a charge which 1 cannot ascertain,
but which unquestionably amounts to many French
millions. Another of the new charges is an annuity
of four hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling,
to be paid (if they choose to keep faith) by daily
payment^, for the interest of the first
Have they ever given themselves the trouble to
state fairly the expense of the management of the
church lands in the hands of the municipalities,
to whose care, skill, and diligence, and that o!
their legion of unknown under-agents. they have
chosen to commit the charge of the forfeited i

avantage peut-il y trouver .' En vous servant sans ccsse de lui,
que faites-vous pour lui.' Rien, absolument rien; et. au con-
traire. VOUS i'aites ce qui ne conduit qu'a l'accabler do nouvelles
charges. Vous avez rejete, a son prejudice, unc o.Tre de 4UU millions,
dont 1' acceptation pouvoit devcnir un ■■ ulagement en

sa faveur; et a cette ressouice, anssi profitable que legitun
avez substitue unc injustice ruincusc. qui. de vutr-
charge le tresor public, et par consequent le peuple, d'un surcrnit
de depense annuelle ue 50 millions au inoins, et dun rembourse-
ment de ISO millions.

" Malheureux peuple ! voila ce que vous vaut en dernier resultat
Impropriation un du

traitement dcs ministres d'une religion bienfai- - nais ils

seront a votre charge: leurs char
vous all ' £'/«<

REVOLUTION IN FRANCi:. 329

and the consequence of which had been so ably
pointed out by the bishop of Nancy?

But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious
heads of incumbrance. Have they made out any
clear state of the grand incumbrance of all, I mean
the whole of the general and municipal establish-
ments of all sorts, and compared it with the regular
income by revenue? Every deficiency in these
becomes a charge on the confiscated estate, before
the creditor can plant his cabbages on an acre of
church property. There is no other prop than
this confiscation to keep the whole state from
tumbling to the ground. In this situation they
have purposely covered all that they ought in-
dustriously to have cleared, with a thick fog ;
and then, blindfold themselves, like bulls that
shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by
the point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded
indeed no worse than their lords, to take their
fictions for currencies, and to swallow down paper
pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose.
Then they proudly lay in their claim to a future
credit, on failure of all their past •engagements,
and at a time when (if in such a matter any
tiling can be clear) it is clear that the surplus
estates will never answer even the first of their
mortgages, I mean that of the four hundred millions
(or sixteen millions sterling) of assigiiats. In all
this procedure I can discern neither the solid sense
of plain dealing, nor the subtle dexterity of in-
genious fraud. The objections within the Assembly
to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation
of fraud are unanswered ; but they are thoroughly

i i .'i

330 REFLECTIONS ON THE

refuted by a hundred thousand financiers in the
street. These are the numbers by which the
metaphysic arithmeticians compute. These are the
grand calculations on which a philosophical public
credit is founded in France. They cannot raise
supplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them
rejoice in the applauses of the club at Dundee,
for their wisdom and patriotism in having thus
applied the plunder of the citizens to the Bervice
of the state. I hear of no address upon this
subject from the directors of the bank, of England ;
though their approbation would be of a little more
weight in the scale of credit than that of the club
at Dundee. But, to do justice to the club, I
believe the gentlemen who compose it to be wiser
than they appear; that they will be less liberal
of their money than of their addresses; and that
they \ I give a dog's ear of their most

rumpled and ragged Scotch paper for twenty of
your fairest assignats.

Early in this year the Assembly issued paper to
the amount of sixteen millions sterling: what must
have been the state into which the Assemblj h:>^
brought your affairs, that the relief afforded bj BO
vast a supply has been hardly perceptible? This
paper also felt an almost immediate depreciation of
five per cent, which in ,-i little time came !■> about
seven. The effect of these assignats on the receipt
of the revenue is remarkable. M. Necker found
that the collectors of the revenue, who received iii
coin, paid the treasury in assignats. The collectors
made seven per cent, by thus receiving in money,
and accounting in depreciated paper. It is not

REVOLUTION IX FRANCE. 331

very difficult to foresee, that this must be inevitable.
It was, however, not the less embarrassing. M.
Necker was obliged (I believe, for a considerable
part, in the market of London) to buy gold and
silver for the mint, which amounted to about twelve
thousand pounds above the value of the commodity
gained. That minister was of opinion, that, whatever
their secret nutritive virtue might be, the state could
not live upon assignats alone; that some real silver was
necessary, particularly for the satisfaction of those
who, having iron in their hands, were not likely to
distinguish themselves for patience, when they
should perceive that whilst an increase of pay was
held out to them in real money, it was again to be
fraudulently drawn back by depreciated paper. The
minister, in this very natural distress, applied to the
Assembly, that they should order the collectors to
pay in specie what in specie they had received. It
could not escape him, that if the treasury paid
three per cent, for the use of a currency, which should
be returned seven per cent, worse than the minister
issued it, such a'dealing could not very greatly tend
to enrich the public. The Assembly took no notice
of his recommendation. They were in this dilemma
— If they continued to receive the assignats, cash
must become an alien to their treasury : if the
treasury should refuse those paper amulets, or should
discountenance them in any degree, they must de-
stroy the credit of their sole resource. They seem
then to have made their option ; and to have given
some sort of credit to their paper by taking it them-
selves ; at the same time in their speeches they made
a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather

f f 4

:!•'!"-! hi 1 ll ( riOJIS ON l Hi

think, above legislative competence; that is, that
there i^ qo difference in value between metallic
money and their assignate. This v. i> a good stout
proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema,
by the venerable fathers of this philosophic synod.
Credat who will — certainly not Judceus -ljn//u.

A noble indignation rises in the minds of your
popular leaders, on hearing the magic lantern in
their show of finance compared to the fraudulent
exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot hear to hear
the sands of the Mississippi compared with the rock
of the church, on which they build their system.
Pray let them suppress this glorious Bpirit, until they
shew to the world what piece of solid ground there
is for their assignats, which they have not pre-
occupied by other charges. They do injustice to
that great mother fraud, to compare it with their
degenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built
solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi.
He added the East India trade ; he added the African
trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenue
of France. All these together unquestionably could
■lot support the structure which the public enthu-
siasm, not he. chose to build upon these bases.
But these were, however, in comparison, generous
delusions. They supposed, and they aimed at. an
increase of the commerce of fiance. They opened
to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. They
did not think of feeding France from its own sub-
stance. A grand imagination found in this flight of
commerce something to captivate. It was where-
withal to dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not
made to entice the smell of a mole, nuzzling and

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 333

burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is.
Men were not then quite shrunk from their natural
dimensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy,
and fitted for low and vulgar deceptions. Above all,
remember, that, in imposing on the imagination, the
then managers of the system made a compliment
to the freedom of men. In their fraud there was no
mixture of force. This was reserved to our time,
to quench the little glimmerings of reason which
might break in upon the solid darkness of this
enlightened age.

On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme
of finance which may be urged in favour of the
abilities of these gentlemen, and which has been
introduced with great pomp, though not yet finally
adopted, in the National Assembly. It comes with
something solid in aid of the credit of the paper
circulation ; and much has been said of its utility
and its elegance. I mean the project for coining
into money the bells of the suppressed churches.
This is their alchymy. There are some follies
which baffle argument; which go beyond ridicule;
and which excite no feeling in us but disgust ; and
therefore I say no more upon it.

It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all
their drawing and re-drawing, on their circulation
for putting off the evil day, on the play between
the treasury and the Caisse d ' Escompte, and on all
these old exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud,
now exalted into policy of state. The revenue will
not be trifled with. The prattling about the rights
of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit
or B pound of gunpowder. Here then the ineta-

334 REFLEl riONS ON 1 HE

physicians descend from their airy speculations, and
faithfully follow examples. What examples? The

examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, dis-
d, when their breath, their strength, their
inventions, their fancies desert them, their confi-
dence still maintains it> ground. In the manifest
failure of their abilities, they take credit for their
olence. When the revenue disappears in
their hands, they have the presumption, in some of
their late proceedings, to value tin nisi Ives on the
relief given to the people. They did not relieve
the people. If they entertained such intention-,
why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid?
The people relieved themselves in spite of tie-
Assembly.

But waving all discussion on the parties who may
claim the merit of this fallacious relief, has there
been, in effect, any relief to the people in any form?
Mr. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper circula-
tion, lets you into the nature of this relief. His
speech to the National Assembly contained a high
and laboured panegyric on the inhabitants of Paris,
.for the constancy and unbroken resolution with
which they have borne their distress and misery.
A tine picture of public felicity? What! great
courage and unconquerable firmness of mind to
endure benefits, and sustain redress! One would
think from the speech of this learned lord mayor.
that tin- Parisians, for this twelvemonth past, had
been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade .
that Henry the Fourth had been stopping up the
avenues to their supply, and Sully thundering with
f Paris ; when in r

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 385

they are besieged by no other enemies than their
own madness and folly, their own credulity and
perverseness. But Mr. Bailly will sooner thaw the
eternal ice of his atlantic regions, than restore the
central heat to Paris, whilst it remains " smitten
with the cold, dry, petrific mace" of a false and
unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech,
that is, on the thirteenth of last August, the same
magistrate, giving an account of his government at
the bar of the same Assembly, expresses himself as
follows: "In the month of July 1789," [the period
of everlasting commemoration,] "the finances of
"the city of Paris were yet in good order; the
" expenditure was counterbalanced by the receipt,
" and she had at that time a million" [forty thousand
pounds sterling] " in bank. The expenses which
" she has been constrained to incur, subsequent to the
" Revolution, amount to 2,500,000 livres. From
"these expenses, and the great falling off in the
" product of the free gifts, not only a momentary,
" but a total, want of money has taken place." This
is the Paris upon whose nourishment, in the course
of the last year, such immense sums, drawn from
the vitals of all France, have been expended. As
long as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome,
so long she will be maintained by the subject pro-
vinces. It is an evil inevitably attendant on
the dominion of sovereign democratic republics.
As it happened in Rome, it may survive that re-
publican domination which gave rise to it. In that
case despotism itself must submit to the vices of
popularity. Rome, under her emperors, united

336 i;i i l.i-i i ion> on mi.

the evils of both systems; and this unnatural com-
bination was one great cause of her ruin.

To tell the people that they are relieved by the
dilapidation of their public estate, is a cruel and
insolent imposition. Statesmen, before they valued
themselves on the relief given to the people by the
destruction of their revenue, ought first to have
carefully attended to the solution of this problem : —
Whether it be more advantageous to the people to
pay considerably, ami to gain in proportion ; or to
gain little or nothing, and to be disburthened of all
contribution? My mind is made up to decide in
favour of the first proposition. Experience is with
me, ami I helieve. the best opinions also. To keep
a balance between the power of acquisition on the
part of the subject, and the demands he is to answer
on the part of the state, is a fundamental part of the
skill of a true politician. The means of acquisition
are prior in time and in arrangement. Good order
is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled
to acquire, the people, without being servile, must
be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must
have his reverence, the laws their authority. The
body of the people must not find the principles of
natural subordination by art rooted out of their
minds. They must respect that property of which
they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain
what by labour can be obtained ; and when they find,
as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to
the endeavour, they must be taught their consolation
in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this
consolation, whoever deprives them, deadens their
industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 337

of all conservation. He that does this is the cruel
oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and
wretched ; at the same time that hy his wicked
speculations he exposes the fruits of successful in-
dustry, and the accumulations of fortune, to the
plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the
unprosperous.

Too many of the financiers by profession are apt
to see nothing in revenue but banks, and circula-
tions, and annuities on lives, and tontines, and
perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop.
In. a settled order of the state, these things are not
to be slighted, nor is the skill in them to be held of
trivial estimation. They are good, but then only
good, when they assume the effects of that settled
order, and are built upon it. But when men think
that these beggarly contrivances may supply a re-
source for the evils which result from breaking up
the foundations of public order, and from causing or
suffering the principles of property to be subverted,
they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a me-
lancholy and lasting monument of the effect of
preposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sight-
ed, narrow-minded wisdom.

The effects of the incapacity shewn by the popular
leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth
are to be covered with the "all-atoning name" of liber-
ty. In some people I see great liberty indeed; in many,
if not in the most, an oppressive,degrading servitude.
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without
virtue ? It is the greatest of all possible evils ; for
it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or
restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is,

338 in i ii.i tions on i in.

cannot hear to see it disgraced by incapable heads,
on account of their having high-sounding words in

their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty,

I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart ;
they enlarge ami liberalise our minds ; they animate
our courage in a time of conflict. Old as I am, I
read the tine raptures of Lucan and Corneille with
pleasure. Neither do 1 wholly condemn the little
arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the
carrying of many points of moment ; they keep the
people together ; they refresh the mind in its exer-
tions ; and they diffuse occasional gaiety over the
severe brow of moral freedom. Every politician
ought to sacrifice to the graces; and to join com-
pliance with reason. But in Mich an undertaking as
tiiat in France, all these subsidiary sentiments and
artifices are of little avail. To make a government
requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of
power; teach obedience: and the work is done.
To give freedom is still more easy. It is not
necessary to guide ; it only requires to let go the
rein. But to form a free government; that is, to
temper together these opposite elements of liberty
and restraint in one consistent work, requires much
thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and
combining mind. This I do- not find in those who
take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps
they are not so miserably deficient as they appear*
I rather believe it. It would put them below the
common level of human understanding. But when
the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an
auction of popularity, their talents, in the construe?
tion of the state, "ill he of no service. They will

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 339

become flatterers instead of legislators; the instru-
ments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them
should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly
limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he
will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who
will produce something more splendidly popular.
Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause.
Moderation will be stigmatised as the virtue of
cowards ; and compromise as the prudence of trai-
tors ; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which
may enable him to temper and moderate on some
occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become
active in propagating doctrines, and establishing
powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose
at which he ultimately might have aimed.

But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at
all that deserves commendation in the indefatigable
labours of this Assembly ? I do not deny that,
among an infinite number of acts of violence arid
folly, some good may have been done. They who
destroy every thing certainly will remove some
grievance. They who make every thing new, have
a chance that they may establish something bene-
ficial. To give them credit for what they have
done in virtue of the authority they have usurped,
or to excuse them in the crimes by which that
authority has been acquired, it must appear, that
the same things could not have been accomplished
without producing such a revolution. Most as-
suredly they might ; because almost every one of
the regulations made by them, which is not very
equivocal, was either, in the cession of the king,
voluntarily made at the meeting of the states, or in

340 REFLECTIONS ON THE

the concurrent instructions to the orders. Some
usages have been abolished on just grounds ; but
they were such, that if they had stood as they were
to all eternity, they would little detract from the
happiness and prosperity of any state. The im-
provements of the National Assembly are superficial,
their errors fundamental.

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather
to recommend to our neighbours the example of
the British constitution, than to take models from
them for the improvement of our own. In the
former they have got an invaluable treasure. They
are not, I think, without some causes of apprehen-
sion and complaint ; but these they do not owe to
their constitution, but to their own conduct. I
think our happy situation owing to our constitution;
but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part
singly ; owing in a great measure to what we have
left standing in our se\ era! reviews and reformations,
as well as to what we have altered or superadded.
Our people will find employment enough for a truly
patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding
what they possess from violation. I would not
exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed,
it should be to preserve. I should be led to my
remedy by a great grievance. In what I did, I should
follow the example of our ancestors. 1 would make
the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of
the building. A politic caution, a guarded circum-
spection, a moral rather than a complexions! timidity,
were among the ruling principles of our forefathers
in their most decided conduct. Not being illumi-
with the light of which the gentlemen vi'

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 341

France tell us they have got so abundant a share,
they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance
and fallibility of mankind. He that had made them
thus fallible, rewarded them for having in their
conduct attended to their nature. Let us imitate
their caution, if we wish to deserve their fortune,
or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we
please, but let us preserve what they have left ;
and, standing on the firm ground of the British
constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather
than attempt to follow in their desperate flights
the. aeronauts of France.

I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think
they are not likely to alter yours. I do not know
that they ought. You are young ; you cannot
guide, but must follow the fortune of your country.
But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in
some future form which your commonwealth may
take. In the present it can hardly remain ; but
before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass,
as one of our poets says, " through great varieties
of untried being," and in all its transmigrations to
be purified by fire and blood.

I have little to recommend my opinions, but
long observation and much impartiality. They
come from one who has been no tool of power,
no flatterer of greatness ; and who in his last acts
does not wish to belie the tenour of his life. They
come from one, almost the whole of whose public
exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of
others ; from one in whose breast no anger durable
or vehement has ever been kindled, but by what
he considered as tyranny; and who snatches from

;]42 hi 111 1 ii.is-. \,-.

his share in the endeavours which are used by good
men to discredit opulent oppression, the hours he
has employed on your affairs ; and who in so doing
persuades himself he has not departed from his
usual office: they come from one who d<
honours, distinctions, and emoluments, but little j
and who expects them not at all ; who has no
contempt for fame, and no fear of obloquy ; who
shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion :
from one who wishes to preserve consistency, hut
who would preserve consistency by varying his
means to secure the unity of his end ; and, when
the equipoise of the vessel in which he sail- m ij
be endangered by overloading it upon one side, i-
desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons
to that which may preserve its equipoise.

THE END.

HKTC I] FT. AND PALMER, IT. INTER*. CAMBBID8K,

.. %■ J - s "3

(

University of Toronl

Library

Pi

DO NOT /

REMOVE /

THE I

CARD [

. -

FROM 4

THIS \

POCKET X

Acme Library Card Pocket

LOWE-MARTIN CO. limited

, 1